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.