Lapse

I've been thinking a lot about the word exchange.  I will not be joining my artistic companions in Denmark, and the nature of my exchange will be filtered.

Philisophically I find this very interesting.  Thre are only so many experiences we, with our limits, can have.  There are newspapers, novels and friends.  But when opening our lens to the world, even the neighbourhood next door, it seems, we need to invite more.

Something should happen in an exchange.  Something zingy.  A moment of recognition.  Like what happens when you look down and see your shape squished in tall grasses, moonlight filling it.

When I think of exchange, I imagine a lapse in emotional distance, connection in the midst of context laid sometimes with care, sometimes thoughtlessly, sometimes by chance.  From this vantage, a major part of any exchange is actually the background:   your life's accumulation of sleep, the number of times you have known yourself wrong, good;  whether you count swiftly, slowly by ones, tens, hundreds, zeroes.

SEVEN is seven people sharing one context some of the time.  We meet for three hours once a month, mostly doing business.  Ok, so who is going to write that grant?  The blog schedule is as follows....   My job is to write the agenda and make sure we stay on track so we can get the work done.  I like creating a safe place for others and myself.  I like laying the context and don't mind when it is dull, flat, distanced.  But my job is also to make sure we get the business done, so there is time to share our art, our experiences, laughs.

Even after the agenda is followed and everyone has had a chance to speak  ...we often want more.   I don't even think I know what it is precisely.  But I do know when it has happenned.

At the last meeting of SEVEN, I explained that I just didn't know how to respond artistically to the Denmark show.   I was truly happy for everyone going ...but that wasn't cutting it.   Emotionally, I felt too disconnected.   They said, well, you could write about that.  "Oh great." I laughed with them; then with a deepened radio announcer voice boomed,  "The indifference of Kelly."

Not exactly something to be proud of; but potentially, a starting point.

Importance of flexibility and regular meetings.

Once upon a time the seven of us met up for the first time and made some good decisions planning future activities for our group  which we named SEVEN since.... there are 7 of us.
We have kept up with monthly meetings over the past 2 1/2 years. Each meeting is about 3 hours long, at the moment we are doing morning meetings, nine o'clock 'till noon.
Mostly we have all been able to attend, sometimes a person or two has had to miss a meeting or two - other times we have tried to accommodate the person who was having trouble with a meeting date and if it has worked for the rest of us, we have moved the meeting to the day which would fit into everyone’s schedule.
From my perspective it is of crucial importance that we all try to make the meetings every time one is planned and it is important that we are flexible around these dates and it is important to recognize that sometimes things just cannot be moved around, due to other people’s pre-existing schedules and plans.
It has been one of my personal stumbling points at times where I have had to breathe deeply and try to keep calm. Possibly because ......... I don’t have all that many balls to juggle these days ...... and other people in the group do.
What does delight me is that although we wriggle and writhe and try to make it fit and it sometimes feels like it is really hard to get it all together, it always works out in the end.
In some weird way it seems that when we finally make it to a meeting all of us, the bending and shifting was absolutely the right thing to do even if it didn’t feel great while it happened.
Making a collection of very different people and minds work as an entity, uniting each and everyone of our deepest and strongest wishes, for ourselves, our businesses and our group is a challenge of dimensions.
First off where do we as individuals put the priorities on the three aforementioned points, which one is more important:
The Group, Our Businesses, Our personal selves?
We have worked on it from the first time we met and somehow somewhere something must have been working. For we are all still hanging in there with smiles on our faces - a grunt escaping at times, but.... mostly smiles. When wanting a ‘long-term relationship’ to work out there is a lot of work involved always and ..... we are doing it, loving it and surprising each other and ourselves along the way.

Pia, bouncing member of SEVEN
Wonderous Woolerie