LIMBO

Thoughts after LIMBO

/ RCRuiz

We are nearing the close of another season of LIMBO. It’s been a good season and watching LIMBO flourish as more participants come to the workshop meetings has been a source of joy for all of us who are involved.

It’s a privilege to bear witness to how participants discover and grow in their strengths–remembering that they carry all these talents and gifts with them and they have the right to be here and actually, they haven’t yet showed us all that they can be. During yesterday’s session, one of the participants painted a beautiful image of a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon–saying in their own words: “this is me in my former life and this is me in my life now, carrying some of the same colours from before, but I am more me now.”

The conversations in LIMBO are a reminder of why spaces like these are needed.

I worry a little as I think about the precariousness of LIMBO’s future. Will we still get funding for the next season? Will we be able to continue? How can we bring LIMBO’s participants into existing networks? How can we support the community of LGBTQ+ asylumseekers who have come to LIMBO?

I am then reminded that we can only do what we can do, right now. We can’t control the future. We can’t control circumstances or events, but we can do what we can do in this time that’s available to us with the resources that we have right now.

During yesterday’s workshop, Rafik Opti, our wonderful guest facilitator, invited us to visualise through painting, the kind of world we want to see. Maybe visualise through the use of animals, they said. And they used the example of how they like to visualise their self as a friendly dinosaur. It was such a beautiful sunny day and I was happy to be in LIMBO again after missing the last meeting because I was sick. I wanted to capture the brightness of the sun and the light I was feeling. I wanted to just smear colour on the canvas. I discovered that it doesn’t always work as I imagine it should, but I thought I saw a pterodactyl emerging from the mess I made, and flowers blooming amid the morass and then one of the participants said: ‘but I see an eye. I see an eye looking from the canvas and there is a flower blooming from its eye.’

I thought of how beauty can be found even in messiness and how art isn’t about perfection–just as life isn’t about perfection. The true art is in the ability to see what is hopeful and good and beautiful when we think there is none. I think that’s what we do for each other in LIMBO. Everyone goes through difficult days, but we can be there to remind each other that there are also sunny days and flowers can bloom in unexpected places.

I hope that you who read this entry will find flowers in unexpected places. Hope and joy to carry you through days that may sometimes seem grim and dark. I wish you blessings and peace and thank you for dropping by.

*If you have time, visit Rafik’s site. Make sure to watch Black Joy. Rafik is paving the way for others to follow in their footsteps.

The joy of LIMBO

/ RCRuiz

On Sunday, we marked the close of this season with LIMBO and the close of our partnership with FramerFramed. Framer Framed has been home to LIMBO since the first workshop took place in 2022. When we start up again in September, it will be at a new place.

Sunday was a celebration with food, music, dance and presentations from different participants in the group. As part of the celebration, we put together a mini-exhibition to show off what we had done together during the LIMBO sessions.

Looking back at the season, I am thankful to be part of this space. Bearing witness to how participants take ownership of the space, makes me feel incredibly happy. We had a mini-workshop on self-defense (more practical than I had imagined), a workshop on Iranian dance, and a small open stage with a q&a with one of LIMBO’s budding artists, as well as sharing of poetry from a budding writer, and also a sharing of journey reflections.

Sahar, who is a friend of LIMBO, made a wonderful comforting dish called Ash Reshte. I am googling recipes to see if we can try to make it home ourselves.

When I see how participants are flourishing, it makes my heart expand. I think of one of LIMBO’s participants sharing with us how they’d forgotten what they had in their self, until they came to LIMBO. They remembered that they were an artist, that they had this capacity and capability not just to make art, but also to share it with others.

In conversation with some visitors who expressed a wish to create a space like LIMBO, we talked about what it means to establish such a space and how we need to change the way we look at organising and leadership. How at the beginning, we need to change our mindset from: I am helping you to I want to serve and understand your needs and I want to discover how to support you so you can see the power that you already have inside you. To say: “this space is created by all of us together and belongs to all of us together and my voice doesn’t carry more weight than yours, but all our voices are equal in weight”. That also requires a different kind of seeing and a different kind of discipline.

Spaces like LIMBO allow us to be vulnerable. In such a space where we don’t need to fear being judged, where we don’t have to be perfect, we can become as we were meant to be. No pressure. No “you must be”, but simply free.

We break bread together, we share our joys and sorrows, we laugh and we dance, and we give thanks even as we acknowledge that life is challenging and hard.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

Fluidity and freedom

/ RCRuiz

After the first LIMBO of 2024, I find myself eager to see how future LIMBO’s will unfold. We started the first LIMBO with some discussion and reading and from that discussion and reading we went on to write our own letters inspired by some readings from The Letter Q: Queer Writers Notes to their Younger Selves. For those interested, some of these letters are available on poets.org.

The letter writing was a divergence from the workshop theme/plan which I had in mind, but in coming to LIMBO, I felt what was important was to find out first where the discussion would lead us. Every announced aspect of the session was a placeholder for what might come up as being more important or beneficial to the participants at the moment. I think the fluidity of conducting meetings in this way might be more helpful/fruitful than creating a set program with activities we nudge participants towards. I think of how participants might come up and say: can we do this instead? Or can we work together on something? I’m curious as to that last part as I do want to try something at a future meeting.

For me, LIMBO is an ongoing process and it’s one that I find quite joyful. I do wonder how workshop culture would change if we shifted our approach and started asking ourselves: what is it that those coming to the workshop need in this moment? Is it be possible to make room for a different approach and would a consumer-minded society be willing to embrace a workshop that doesn’t clearly label itself from the get-go?

For all the complexity that comes with it, I find LIMBO to be freeing. No doubt there will be difficult moments but LIMBO is about working together to hold and keep this space wherein we can all just be (as one of the participants so beautifully put it) just be human.

Here’s a challenge that mirrors what we did: Read one or two letters from the Letter Q out loud. Give yourself 30 minutes and write a letter to yourself: could be your younger self, your present self or your future self. No editing. No passing judgment on yourself. Just write. Afterwards, read out loud. Ask yourself: what surprised you?

Blessings and peace to you who read and may you find yourself joyfully surprised.