Journeys of Emergent Life Creativity

Journeys of Emergent Life Creativity

Hello! Mid June will mark 2.5 years of journeying without a set home for me. I recall telling my friend when I decided to head out that I could be out and about for two months or for two years. Here we are at longer than the latter! On a very practical level, I really owe a lot of gratitude to my vehicle Ollie for taking me where I have been, to the lands and skies that have held me as I slept or explored internally and externally, to all the people who have provided and received care, and to all the dogs, cats, chickens and their humans who have allowed me to tend to them in exchange for monetary benefit or physical stability and a lot of freedom in how I engage and think about my days. I am going to die one day and this is absolutely a journey and slowed way of life I would not have wanted to miss before doing so. Finding my own meaning-making around this journey as a continual unfolding and sharing is invaluable to me.

I want to acknowledge the immense amount of privilege in my lifestyle given all the past and present war, division, and planetary degradation that renders many places and people powerless over their well being and literal ability to live, let alone their ability to contemplate fully living from vantage points around individuation, enlightenment, self actualization, unity and the like. My lifestyle feels necessarily creative to me as I cultivate ways of being and alternative options to modernity’s. Right now modernity is pretending that what we are doing is working and acceptable, attempting to hide the costs of our consumption and division and letting othered people and lands suffer the consequences. Seeing high gas and food prices and bare forests are probably just tip of the iceberg signs in terms of experiences that are inevitably also going to ripple into those of us who are more white or more privileged. I would like to be somewhat practiced in sharing with one another on emotional and material levels as mind and earth-consuming technology and ways of living that we have been sold enhance, transform, and/or crumble. 

I have gratitude to many folks for their kindness, teachings, or generosity and for practicing a bit of proximity with me. Cultural and colonialist programming as well as my own life experiences can make this practice both a learning and also that much more important. You are probably on my list of folks I thank, whether or not I name you here directly. I would like to name some specific appreciations and people now. To my brother who has shown me how to do repairs such as brake changes and bonded with me as I learned. To my sister who has appreciated park, pizza time, and hiking play dates with my niblings. To my mom who has been my physical and emotional emergency contact and a worried but present and supportive rock. To her partner Sam who has freely lent me his bed occasionally when visiting and calls his room mine as if it is when I am a guest. To my friend Skye who has played hard with me as we also traversed lots of personal and relational learning and space sharing. To my friend Venture who has uplifted me, asked me questions, and told me stories with perspective while inviting me into their home and to the farm that we both volunteer at. To my friend Roi for cheering me on, watching inspiring films with me, and holding a lens of appreciation for my counter culture lifestyle, nature bonding, and offerings. To my friend Dave who has supported journeying on direct intellectual, medicinal, and land-loving levels. To my friend Hande who has stored some of my belongings in her home and has tea time conversation with me whenever I come to visit or retrieve things. To my friend Maggie who has welcomed me to tend the land where her cabin is and sometimes shares material, meals, and informational resources. To my friend Whit who has held playfulness, a loving and deep humanness, and is empowered to support, embody, and example alternative ways of being and living. 

All of you folks have been incredibly generous and connecting and my hope and practice is that I give back and meet you in your sharing by showing up, listening, giving gifts, teaching, feeding, hanging, working, laughing, relating and so on. I truly love that my life lends to intimate and often one on one mutual care and evolution in relation to creativity, thoughts, actions, connections, and empowered choices. My hope is that I invite exploration and freedom of being who you are and what you have to offer when we come together. 

I am also very thankful to all of the places who have held me. From oceans, lakes, and rivers to sand dunes, high desert, and rocky pine-y mountains. I am spoken to and taught in messaging that is primarily body sensation and feeling based. Sound and vision also speak to me as I relate with plants, animals, land and sky. Sometimes beings, weather, or situations are fierce and still I am blessed and healed in natural spaces. Places of wild land, animals, plants and visible stars don’t even have to try as they tend to my nervous system, sensory appreciations, and need for more than human bonding and being. I give back to place, trees, and soil by whistling, playing my flutes, dancing, singing, humming, journeying, spreading native seeds, peeing, listening intimately, slowing down, wandering, crying, saying and feeling chills of ‘thank you’, growing herbs or food, valuing my own awakening journey, and touching with the intention of care and healing. I strongly support anyone who would also like to tend, love, and give back to land and to indigenous caretakers. 

I am glad to give voice here a bit about what my journeying with land, animals, and others without a set home has been about for me as there are a wide range of words that I have heard put to me or my time these past couple years. I don’t always share what I am up to because of the range of perceptions that can come my way yet it is good for me to know my center when I am open about my life. I will share some of the words now that have come from connected curiosity as well as assumptive bewilderment. Revolutionary, escapist, caring, complicit, loving, land-honoring, free, adventurous, explorative, wanderer, homeless, in need of help, pity-able, wise, wander-lust, sovereign, nomad, lone wolf, alien, weird, savior, from another dimension, and deep. Each of these labels or adjectives is a certain lens from which to view me or my actions and it is fascinating how broad they are depending on a person’s cultural, educational, spiritual or familial vantage points that may or may not be in their meta awareness. Some of these descriptions feel supportive, some feel uplifting, some feel judgmental, some lack direct connection to me and my experience, some are assumptive or unchecked projections, some are ideas or stories, some are biased, some feel pathologizing, some are prescriptive, some miss my views and internal world, some feel like growing edges, some feel unrealistic, some feel realistic, some feel expectant, some feel aligned, some feel insightful, some feel kind, some feel like growth potential, and many feel like a mix of things. Walking this nomadic journey is a major practice in discerning, holding myself, asking for help, and existing in my truths, integrity, and learnings even when some folks don’t get it, dislike me or my actions, or find me different and in turn hard to connect to. 

Given all of these vantage points that I get to meander in and discern my truths from, I’d like to share a little with you about what I experience this time as being about for me. This journeying has been incredibly regulating overall, accepting of my sensory processing that does not prefer constantly being in a loud stimulating city, allowing and valuing of intimate human and more-than human connection, cultivating of intuitive, plant-loving, energetic and embodied ways of knowing beyond the brain, inviting of reflection around how my choices and life story ripple into the collective, questioning of how I consume, appropriate, support others, waste, and gather information, embracing of a need and prioritization around living with land as whole and holistic health, welcoming of sleeping-dream messaging and explorations as they relate to my daily life and journey, partly fulfilling of a living core dream to know landscapes and beings more intimately again, and naturally subverting to colonialist ideas and ways that falsely propose more consumption, recreation, education, beauty standards, career, social norms, and specific relational-dynamics as ways of finding fulfillment. I am walking a path that is unique to my essence and the opportunities that arise as bigger mysteries, philosophies, privileges or lack thereof, connections, and my heart play and move together. I am walking a path that gives an example of potential and perspective outside of traditional expectations and that lends some sovereignty to my time, creativity, energy, thoughts, cares, and soul. 

I feel I have gotten to let nature nurture me as a parent. This nurturance is healing and I have aimed to reciprocate that nourishment because, to me, that is the healing that people and the planet need right now. I show up to my human relationships with a bit more clarity of who I am as well as boundaries and honesty that fuel genuine connecting and mutual support. As a Libra sun and Aquarius rising it is valuable to me to meet friend’s and family in kind and small or doable-big ways that allow nature’s nurturance to ripple and push lines of capitalist ownership, individualism, and separation from one another, our places, and the beings of them. 

I am curious to see how my mental, heart-oriented, and literal journeying continues and also where, how, or if we may meet.

<3 Jai