In the lead up to our first LIMBO of the year, I wanted to try a different approach. One that’s more loose and which means also posting to the group more in the lead up to the Sundays. I think of how providing material to think on could become a basis for discussion before we go on towards the work of collaborative or individual creation. This time, I want to focus on the questions around writing and creation of story, character and world. I think of ways in which we tell story and where our stories come from and how sharing our works and our words with one another is an act of affirmation and also an act of recognising and taking and making space in the world. If we can encourage confidence and voice so people can stand up and say: this is what I sound like and will you listen to me? I feel that we will have already done some of what we are meant to do.

These past weeks, I have also been thinking on and off about a piece I’m supposed to be writing in Dutch. It’s an interesting process to be writing in Dutch. Understanding that some of what I say and how I say will give me away to the reader and tell them that I am not a natural-born Dutch person. I think of how the tongue stumbles and wrestles with language and how language can be a stumbling block at times, how it can at times be a wall, but how it also can be a bridge if we can let go of wanting perfection. For the recipient it means being willing to listen even when the syntax or the grammar doesn’t sound as a “real Dutch person” would say it. But on my part it also means a willingness to be vulnerable and admit that I really don’t know how to write everything as it’s meant to be written, but this is the meaning that I want to get across. It’s kind of funny to be going through this process as for a long time I fought against writing in Dutch. It was this weird feeling of: I’ve already had to do my best to write English really well and now I have to work at writing in yet another language. But unlike when I was younger, I find myself less resistant to the process. I suppose it’s a certain knowledge that comes with age.

I wonder when do we become more than a person living in a country? When do we make that transition into being part of a country? And what does this mean for my identity as Filipino? I am still Filipino. Philippines is still home to me. But I am also Dutch and The Netherlands is also home to me. So, it is possible to be two things at the same time and to occupy two identities at the same time. To be Dutch and Filipino. To be at home here and there.

These are some of the things going through my head as I write and work on things that I want to work on. My thoughts are still quite messy, but I like messiness. Life is always more interesting when there is some messiness in it. I remember my sister and I joking with one another about how our chaos was order to us because we knew just exactly where things were and because in the search for misplaced objects, we sometimes stumbled upon the most interesting things. I wonder what my sister would think of life and its messiness at the moment and I wonder how she would feel in LIMBO space. I think she would have fit right in and in a sense I take her with me when I enter that space. Ah. She would have loved it. She would love the space, the participants and everything that LIMBO represents. A space for people to just be and where just being is enough.

One day at a time. I take life, one day at a time. I dream and I plan and I do what I can. One day at a time. Everything else will unfold as it’s meant to unfold and in this knowledge there is peace.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and may 2024 bring you good things.