What I've Learned From Walking

Where to begin?

Classroom Alive has finished it's movement. I've been walking and hitchhiking with 11 people for the last 2 months and 3 weeks. Yesterday we walked all the way into the city, and saw the city from the top of the hill. I'm in Athens! I'm in Greece!

I'm ready for what's coming next. I feel like I've been re-set after living in a tent for this long, and have a different perspective on things. On myself. On people. On culture. I feel ready to find my place in the world.

A drawing of me by Berkeley Oceguera, my dear friend.

I'm thinking a lot about fine art and social practice. I just read an email of the same filmmaker who made the Welcoming Committee,  and he said that he saw social practice as "just living." I think I've known this, but made it larger in my head. Art. ART.

I'm devoting a lot of time for just learning, and letting go of expectations and judgements about what I think I should be doing,
I want to read John Cage, and more about contemporary art.
I'm interested in dance, too.
I'd like to be more confidant,

We were walking and my stomach was hanging over the waist straps of my backpack. I thought of what Mathijs said to me, that no one should oppress themselves, and I thought, "insecurity ends here, with me." And I felt proud of my body.

When I said I was always so quiet because I was afraid of not quite saying what I meant, he said I couldn't find out what I meant in less I say the wrong thing first. Basically, try. Keep trying.

I've been feeling transparent because I don't have any projects of my own, no way to relate to my life in the world. I'm always afraid of asking for what I want, or even knowing what I want, and I think this is the most important thing for everyone. To find out.

It's up to me to structure my life in a way that fulfills me. Right now, I chose to be in an apartment with 11 people in Athens, in an empty afternoon, talking about how to budget our money, and what to cook, and how to harvest our studies. I choose to fly back to Alaska, and then to move to Portland, OR again.

I'm also okay with not knowing, right now. I know I've learned how to just live, and I feel like I can build on that. I feel the desire to work, and to keep learning. I don't have to produce anything, or express anything right now. But I do feel a desire to have an 'inquiry' practice, a way to go through what's going on in me. It doesn't have to take the same form, all of the time. I don't know what form it takes. I do crave feeling playful and stimulated. I crave feeling safe and loved and expansive. I do crave having assignments and suggestions and ideas. I'm not alone in this.

Reasons I Should Be Yipped

The Youth Initiative Program is a year-long, community-housed, confidence-building burst of inspiration and motivation in Jarna, Sweden. Yesterday, Manich spent all morning convincing me why I should go.
He made a few points about "yippies":
Instead of seeing a lack if resources or possibilties, they see what they have.
They are like a world-wide family.
They've learned how to reach out to find what they need.
They want to make the world a better place.
They care about how they show up in the world.

I don't know if it's where I should go. Every spring, there's an Initiative Forum, a week of speakers and meals full of inspiration about how to start projects and how to create.
Even if I don't go, it makes me think how I can incorporate this into my life.

Mathijs and Caleb we're discussing what a continuation of Classroom Alive would look like. They talked about how to structure a curriculum, whether it would be in one place or in many places, whether the students would travel to different teachers, whether they would stay together the whole time or only for 6-months at a time. While we hitch-hiked this morning, Mathijs and I continued talking about it. Why is it that we want to create something like this? A supportive community? To have a group who wants to see how their learning relates to their lives and the world, instead of just preparing them for the labor market? It isn't so much a commune as a shared studio space, a shared learning space, and either could be a set curriculum for a few years, with specific goals, or a student collective with continuing support for everyone in each step, and a chance to tach each other.

When we were at the Livig Wholeness Institute, Clare said to me that when she returned from her year of traveling to interview social entrepreneurs, she began to seek out people that she wanted to spend time wth. As we drove crazy-fast on windy roads, as the driver smoked weed and rolled a cigarete in his lap, answered his cell phone and listened to techno-pop-crazy music, all with a tiny puppy in a cardboard box by Mathijs' feet, (!) I thought about all the people close to me, and what brings us together. With all of them, we're interested in how we can be more free, or more of ourselves, or live passionately, despite what the world has shown us is possible. There's something in me that believes and lives for this, even though I have surface-y fears and doubts.

I think everything has led me up to this point, and I don't know what's next, but I believe in my interests of a compassionate place in the world, to learn and create and be myself. I know it's missing in my life, and if I can find a way to bring it, I believe it is a need for others.

I want to learn more from places like YIP. There's a few names, Deborah Freize, Orland Bishop, Alan Watts and Alan Webb, and Edgard Gouveah. They talk about education, or how to start new things in the world, or how to start even if you don't have enough money, or support.

I listened to a podcast with Eve Ensler yesterday. She talked about how we are so obsessed with our bodies, but never really inhabit them. She also talked about how our lives are "precious only up to a point"- and our comforts are no more important than anyone else's. I think somehow I need to expand my fears beyond my own comfort. Mathijs said we find our identity in the things we work on. What if my "art" is where I find these meanings, these answers? And if ignite myself the compassionate space to have the questions, and to try and fail, and to learn (so I can be part of the world)?

And remember, there is plenty of time.

I'm not an artist, anymore.

I had a conversation yesterday that really turned everything on it's head, for me.

There's a few things I'd like to go into.
One, is group-living.
There's something about living with a group where there's no privacy, and you have to share everything, and every nice thing you have is divided into eleven parts.
Lunches have been really hard. There's stress, especially when we're hungry.
I thought I could hold on, because there's only another month left with the group, and then I'll be home. I have daydreams of my own meals again, and getting to eat in peace and quiet, or getting to eat as much as I need, as slowly as I want, etc, etc. But when I really think about it, I don't know if I've been happier, having space to eat alone.
I said that to Caleb, that I knew I could hold out, because I know it's going to end. He said something back that actually shamed me, he said he saw the point was that we could find a solution, as if it wasn't going to end, that we were actually going to try to solve what was going on now.
Maybe the solution isn't sharing everything, and being together all of the time. There's a reason that it's been a difficult thing for people for generations. In some cultures, the men eat first. In some cultures, the women eat first. There are social and cultural traditions around meals, there's manners, there's decorum. And I think this has been something that's always been difficult--so it's not like I want to ignore it, either. Maybe the solution is we share meals some of the time. Maybe we need to have space. But it's also important to ask why it's so difficult.
I've been wanting to write a big piece about this. About what it means to be around people, and why we choose to be around some people and not others. Certain people make us feel certain things, and when we're in a group, we are confronted with all these parts of ourselves, all of these mirrors, all at once. That's really difficult. There's a reason we separate into nuclear families, but that's also created a lot of isolation and difficulty, too. There's a reason I've always wanted to live in a group, and my daydreams about eating with large groups of people are so pressing on my mind.
I've been wanting to write about how confrontation has unraveled a lot of parts of me, too. I was thinking about it when we were sitting around, and I was feeling stress about being with everyone. I realized that a lot of my difficulties have also been released, too. There's something about pressing up against these difficulties with people that has also let something go, inside of me. I am less careful about what I eat, I don't judge it as much. I recognize the shame I've always had with eating, and how I've never wanted to take it upon myself to really feed myself, as if I mean it, as if I am important.

This also came up in a conversation that I had yesterday. Mathijs said that it seemed that whenever things get difficult, I always seem to want to hide myself. I said that I've always been overwhelmed by everything else that is going on in the world, and never able to take care of what I want, as if it's enough for me to just be alive.

This relates to the title of this post. Mathijs asked me if I feel like making art fulfills something in me. I actually didn't know. I don't know. I've always had this idea that I needed to make art, as if I need to prove something. And when I let that go, when I stop identifying with that, then I feel like something is lost, and it felt scary to let that go. When I think about a thesis year, I have an image of blank canvases with some sort of painting, some future project that makes sense, an ideal that would encompass whatever needs to come out when I spend a year contemplating life and producing something, but it never feels like me.

What if I let that go?
This is a really important issue to me.
I got an email from Blake Mason, a person that I met and really admire, who lives in an artist-collective house in Portland, and I met him when he was hosting movie nights in his backyard, and showed a film he made that I loved, The Welcoming Committee. He had found the Classroom Alive project, and was reading about my topic of study, and said it related to what he's been thinking about. He wrote his thesis about out-of-the-box art projects, and came upon Social Practice and fell in love with it.
There's something in me that is curious about social practice. I'm curious about what art means beyond fine art, and I'm curious about the idea that the audience can make anything a piece of art at will, just by changing their perception.
I talked with Mathijs about this yesterday, and he also expressed what I feel. That "art" isn't "art therapy." That there's something about "art" or "fine art" that involves doing things properly, with a respect for the craft, and you really have to devote yourself to it. You are searching for a new form, in order to change perception for everyone.

I was thinking about artists who have taken "art" to different levels, like Sophie Calle, or Marina Abromovic, and Ernesto Pujol.

This is a really rambling post, that I'm going to edit down so that it's actually readable. I know I get in these moods where I have so many questions, and I feel like I don't have enough time to figure them out, and the answer is somewhere outside of me. So I'll let that go.
But I do want to spend time just letting myself have this space, and not try to be anything.

This has brought up a new chapter for me, it feels like. I've always had an image of what it means to create something, and the pressure that I should be obsessed with some work. Sometimes, when I really have to admit it, I don't want to do anything. I want to read books and eat ice cream. Art feels like something outside of me, that I have to conform myself to. But if I go to the deepest parts of myself, any sort of project would really have to come out of the core of me. And I think, also, not be concerned with being ground-breaking, or being anything, but just being me.

Mathijs said I don't give myself credit for the things that I already do. I feel like I have to step away from expecting myself to be an artist. He said that baking bread really well is art, too. These are things I know, but also have this nagging that I want to know what it feels like to write a novel, even though I hate writing groups and bad manuscripts. Like I have to spend all day in a studio doing something, even though I hate being alone. Are these ways that I oppress myself? Do I know the answer, intuitively, about what I want to do in the world? Is that why I've been reading all of these books about freedom?

When I wrote about what I want to do, my answers were things like, have a clean, cozy home. Watch films and grow vegetables and keep chickens and read books about artists and take a sewing class. Why do I feel like art has to be something outside of me?

Living Wholeness

There's a month left with Classroom Alive.

There's two more weeks of walking.

I'm landed at the Living awhile ness Institute, near the east coast of Greece. It's run by Maria Scordialos, who has a Ted talk I'm meaning to watch later this afternoon. I've met Clare, who wrote a book called One Wild Life, about her time interviewing social entrepreneurs around the world. I've also met Vanessa, who does work with social architecture. Maria does work with the Art of Hosting, a process that I'm still learning about, that has to do with creating spaces for creative conversation. When I talked with her this morning, and I told her I was an art student, she told me about graphic facilitation, and it's got me thinking about roles of the artist (which was my original question to explore on coming on this trip.)

Something about being here has me really fired up about what's next. They mentioned being able to host a conversation with us about why we came, and what we hope to do next, and seeing their alternative careers gives me hope about my next steps. They're acting as a mirror for us to see how unusual this form of study is, and what it means to have students approach their learning in this way. I'm interested in what's alive in each of us that gave us the impulse to come on this trip in the first place. More specifically, what's alive in me that made me want to come on this trip? When I hear about more integrated learning centers, I feel very excited, about integrating the whole individual.


From here, I have a few thoughts. One of the girls in the group is writing a thesis about interviews she's doing with college-age students who have gone through Waldorf education, and how they differ from students from traditional schools. She asked me what I think I learned in high school, and it brought up a lot of thoughts in me. This relates really strongly to why I'm here. When I wrote my letter of intent, I said I was interested in taking part of an education that came out of a love of learning, and of being out of the regular classroom more in order to be outside, be walking, and be directing our own course of study. There's a few things that come up when I write this. I realize, looking back, that that's exactly what has happened in being here. The specificity of studying art gets lost in group process, in meetings, in planning the route, in figuring out how to live together, and share money, and share intentions. There's no structure in place, so we're creating our own, and that takes a huge form of the learning- and it's also tiring, and for me, quite overwhelming. Already, I've always had a huge difficulty staying focused and grounded, so moving to a new location twice a day, and trying to navigate 11 different emotions and voices all at once can leave me drained. But there's also been quite a difference from being in structured classes. There's more freedom of choice. There's nothing to push against. There's more responsibility for your actions. There's more awareness that everything we do is a choice. In the walking and camping, there's more satisfaction with simple things, and we have fallen into more natural rhythms of listening to our bodies. By subtracting Internet, and a lot of conveniences, our challenges are simpler, somehow, and don't give us the option to stay up all night, or overload with external pressures. This isn't to say there's no stress. Subtracting the Internet, and warmth, and personal space, basic stress comes up. But I feel as though I've had the chance to go back to the most basic parts of myself, like I'm resetting. I see how I am around other people, when I can't hide from them. I see how I react to difficulties, whether it's food or time or needing space or discerning what I want. I see things about myself very clearly, in the form of what I dream about, and what I miss. Without any authority, without paying rent or managing my own money, I have a larger perspective of what money means to me, and what it's like to not think about it. I see what I'm like, being taken away from everything I identify with, and then, because we're studying, my only direction is what I feel interested in, what I feel like I need to learn.

Regarding the things I miss. Every time we come into a city, we're bombarded by culture, by choices of food, by spending money, by clothing and awareness of hygiene, and the desire to sit in cafés. I feel like I have a better awareness of the roles these things have played in my life, and why I need them. I miss the choice to wear clothes that express me that day, or time in front of a mirror to arrange my appearance. I miss talking on the phone, and driving in cars, and bakeries, the radio, libraries and bookstores, reading blogs and watching movies. I also see how these things cause a lot of stress in our group, and how they've caused stress in my life. Insecurity of how I look. Comparing myself and my life to others. Being overcaffeinated. Picking up the pace of a city and feeling I'm not being productive enough. Moving faster. Paying bills. Being afraid of money, being afraid of structures that are already put in place.

So I come to where I'll go from here. I won't remain sleeping in a tent and walking to a new place every day. I'll pay rent again. I'll have my cell phone re-activated. I'll drive a car again. But there's something about being able to see myself away from these things in order to go back to them, and use them to express myself as a creative person in the world. Instead of being controlled by culture, I can take a part of it freely. In terms of school, I can go into a school system as a whole human being. This is where I get a little lost, and feel like I need guidance from people who have started programs and businesses and schools that are unusual. About what it means to get a bachelors degree at an art and craft school in 2013, and pursue a lifestyle out of strength and passion.

So: content-wise, I can go a little bit into what I've been reading and thinking about. I began by reading The Dialectic of Freedom, by Maxine Greene, Art As Experience, by John Dewey, Teaching to Transgress; Educaton as a Practice of Freedom, by bell hooks. I've also read The Philosophy of Freedom, by Rudolph Steiner, Walking With Your Time, by Christine Gruwez, and I've begun reading The Archeology of Knowledge, by. Michel Foucault. A lot of themes that appear are what freedom means, whether we are free as individuals, how realizing our subjectivity shows us how we look at the world, so the way we relate to it can be a choice, and how to relate to the time we're living in as self-actual used individuals, instead of being overwhelmed, by being mechanical.

I might be getting a little general, but it's important to get this all down.

So, when I think of moving forward from here, it's a huge question for me how having a training from a craft school relates to these ideas, and how they can a) help me as an individual so that b) I can relate to the world.

And then there's also the things I've learned about community life, in being here. We have practices of checking in regularly, and holding meetings together, where we work to solve issues together. I've seen how we bring each other to better clarity through interacting and sharing our interests and needs. Clare is one of the people who started the Hedge School Projects, which put on events in socially-charged places around Ireland, where artists and musicians collaborate with speakers about all sorts of topics, and it's a place to come together and learn and talk about what's going on for everybody. This makes me think about how to be involved with our communities in a way we feel like we are free in the world, and have a say, and are able to create.

I don't think I'm an activist. I don't like organizing people. I get overwhelmed by crowds. This sort of community-art isn't really why I'm going to art school, at all. I don't want to paint murals together. I like "fine art," I like galleries. But there's something about the women I just met that have me thinking about this. I realized I also want to learn about everything I don't understand about the world I'm in- about the economy and money systems, about debt, about what living together and sharing resources means, about our energy usage and our different cultures, about how we relate to our bodies, and to food, and to time. I don't know what it means for me to go into these things (because I know that an arts degree related to these things) if I don't know how I'll bring it into the community. I don't want to be on Skype calls all day long, like these women, or necessarily hold retreats about yoga and writing, or anything. This is where I don't know.

There's books on the bookshelf here that have my mind whirring. There's more about Buddhism, and how we relate to nature, there's a book about American Indians, and about the goddess mythologies, and Biodynamic farming, and knitting patterns, and a couple of others. I think I'll write them down as possibilities of study, to somehow integrate them in.

I feel really unsure about where this will lead me. My smallest dream is putting on the equivalent of Hedge Schools in Alaska, and starting a farm/studio space that events can be held at, or conferences. More basically, I dream of having a home again, and going to conferences, of having chickens and a garden and watching films and going to galleries and cooking again, and buying a little car or truck and drinking good coffee and talking to people a lot and wearing clothes I like. Somehow, comics relate to this, too, and writing.

That's where I'm coming from, now. I need courage.

A quick link to remind myself of Ava's blog:

http://warierpigeons.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/wednesday-word-of-the-week/