Something lost

What is it you 

See

When you look at

Us.

Mother Daughters

Once your friends.

Now

Not friends but I don't know

What.

You look in our eyes 

But your smile doesn't 

Reach

Your eyes.

You say yes

But your eyes shift away at the final

Moment.

You look scared found out

But we don't know why you're scared

And then later

We find out.

And I don't think you could

Care less.

Loss grieve heart empty landscape

Confusion many nights wondering why

Mean girls

Not understanding.

Questions unanswerable.

The world is crazy.

People are in delusion.

But it hurts

And something has been lost. 

                       

By Vicki Kelleher 2015

Working the ordinary

Because I am a sensitive-creative type, I always found places like institutions and offices to be like foreign lands....some of these places are very temperature controlled and bland looking. People tended to wear different kinds of clothes - clothes that needed ironing and seemed to lack movement or flow. In fact the whole environment of these places appeared very still and quiet, but not peaceful. Peaceful to me means there is flow and motion, sometimes sound even if it's simply your own breath, distant bird calls, or traffic. Peaceful is quietly happy, content and working together. When I worked in hospitality it felt a bit like this to me because mostly everyone worked together, feeling bonded by the urge to help people, to be of service, the strange working ours often at night, and the sense that you were working outside the rules.

Now contemplating entering into working in an office, I was confronted by the initial fear that I may have to change myself and confirm to something I may not agree with....but things have changed. I realise that there is no way I am willing to forgoe who I am in all of my values and ethical approach to living, that somehow when I was younger I may have felt both unwilling to give these up and also feeling badly about this for some reason, that my strength comes from these values and ethics, and that this is what makes me a good worker and that I can be recognised and appreciated as such. I wish that I had believed in myself and what I bring with me when I was younger, as people probably saw this in me then but I still thought I had to hide it!

Now I am heading out there into the seemingly ordinary world beyond arts and community, but I cannot take the arts and community out of me, it will come through somehow and I will be right behind it!

Returning

I have found that it is so easy to get caught up....thinking, worrying, planning, deciding, working things out, not-thinking....all of this is very draining. Silence or rather quietness is the opposite. Quietness brings refreshment, sensory calm, and a feeling of fullness yet without weight. 

Quietness comes to us either through imposed circumstances or conscious effort. It is difficult to find time and space to practice being quiet, but I find the natural elements an easy way into it....after a time I can sink into my surroundings and the other stuff falls away. The sounds of the ocean or the trees is soothing, a bracing wind can force the mind to just focus on walking one step at a time and this focus can bring us quiet. I am fortunate to live so closely with nature, but calm surroundings, even just a beautiful flower or a potted fern we can rest our eyes upon can help us, nature acts as a bell that brings us back into ourselves, returning home to ourselves in each moment.

Washing up

I wash up

Against the sand 

With the salty water

Brushing against me 

calming my heart

Soothing with it's wet whispers on my skin

I look up and the grey sky shifts a little

Sun emerges rising

Spreading light freely 

No sharp edges

Only indentations in the clouds

I long for its warmth

As the cold water stings my ears and 

The breeze bites at my clothing

Only self remains within the folds of light

But she is too far away to answer my calls

Instead I let go of my breath

And allow the air to swim freely in my lungs

Moving my body towards home

To husband and children you are my home.

Pain/Freedom

Physical pain can be very difficult to deal with. I have been living with different forms of pain in waves for the past 25 years. That's my adult life. For many years it was a few days a month. For the past ten years in can go on for days and weeks and months. At the moment it is weeks. I find myself also struggling in anxiety around it not ending. So then breathing becomes tricky too.

What does this have to do with community development? It makes me stop and forces me to look in...really deeply until I can re emerge out into the world of sunlight and movement. What I find there is wells of despair and wells of compassion....I have drawn water from both. And from this I understand suffering and the effort it takes to lift yourself out of whatever is holding you under. I bring this to my own humanity and towards people I want to work amongst. I understand that time takes a long time, that there is no really beginning or end, merely cycles or waves, going in and going out. Just as we breathe in and out withoutthinking. We long for connection and belonging while also longing for escape. 

When we allow ourselves to show up just as we are, with all our own pain and wildness, we bring a more colourful and interesting pattern to each others lives. We help each other flourish and this for me is community development. 

So while it really is the end of the world to have to mentally work myself through this pain, it brings life into a sharp focus that in the everyday ordinariness we can somehow miss or lose sight of. This can be freedom, the forced relinquishment of the ways in which we see the world, opening more into appreciation and wonder. 

Writing from the heart and other difficulties

...words...don't come easy...to me...

I am in recovery. I love community/arts development work. I find it exhausting because I give it everything I've got...and feel that it is deserving of this devotion. But there is a cost. This cost is my inability to write while I'm living through it. I sit down with all these words floating through my mind and just can't get them out through my fingers and into some kind of form.

Part of this is the desire for honesty in my writing and not all of community development is a bed of roses....or maybe rather it is, thorns included. I feel nervous to put into permanent record the things I haven't worked out from my side. How to communicate with people when every conversation feels like an attack. How to find out practical information from an organising body that is the opposite of organised, how to keep the dream alive when you feel despairing of just getting to next week. All of this with the highs of genuine collaboration of ideas and purpose and direction, great conversations about story and how crucial it is for our lives etc, making connections across country, across the country and across the world. It's a mixed bag and feels good now it's coming to a close but I lost my ability to write and I'm wondering if this is important or not...or does one lead to the other, times of darkness and light, going in then emerging out....no easy answer ...only to just keep going, to write when I can and maybe consider that there is a preparing that happens and a readiness that emerges of its own time, that this time is ok and necessary. 

This process is mysterious and I have always loved a good mystery. 

Washed