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Sitting with the discomfort

/ RCRuiz

I’m thinking again today about Aminata Cairo’s visit with us in LIMBO and the talk she gave about what it means to hold space for one another and how while we long for safe spaces, even such spaces can be fraught because of how we are. So, how do we hold space for one another? How do we make it possible for us to continue to be in community and to share space and make it feel safe and joyful and loving for all who share the space?

It’s something I’ve been thinking on as recent conversations keep pointing me in this direction, including one where I inadvertently created some discomfort because I wasn’t intentional. I think about intentionality and mindfulness and how these words are more than buzz words. I mean, the wellness industry has hijacked mindfulness so the word has kind of become one of those buzzwords–it’s not wrong usage, but its meaning has kind of diluted.

To be mindful is to be present in the moment and therapists often use being mindful to refer to therapy techniques such as meditation. Often when we speak of mindfulness, we think: Oh, let me do breathing exercises or let me do grounding work or let me be present in my body. And people then say: I’m practicing mindfulness. These are all great things to do but mindfulness isn’t just that.

To be mindful is to be conscious of how our words and our actions ripple and echo in spaces. Our actions and words, even the emotions we express if done without intention can hurt even when hurt or harm is the farthest from our minds. I tend to be less mindful when I’m tired or when I’m in a hurry or when I’m distracted. It’s why I try to put away my phone when I know I’m going to meet people. It’s okay if I don’t get that selfie. I was fully present and focused on the person I was meeting. (Although I’m kicking myself now because I should have thought about asking for one, but I just didn’t think about it.)

So what happens when discomfort arises in communal spaces? How do we resolve the discomfort? I think the best starting point is to start from knowing where the other person is coming from. Was it intentional? Or was it simply thoughtlessness? It helps when we raise the point and say: hey, could you be a little more mindful about this matter?

How do we respond when we cause the discomfort?

In a conversation with a very good friend, we talked about the discomfort that arises when we feel that something is happening and we can’t put our finger on it. It’s similar to discomfort that arises when white people enter spaces meant for people of colour and proceed to take the lead or take a positions of leadership even when they are not asked to do so. What do we do about that discomfort?

The question I would ask is: are we able to live with that discomfort? Can we put it aside and still be our full self in the space? If we can’t, do we feel safe enough and seen enough to open a conversation about it? For the person faced with this kind of honesty, the question becomes how do we receive it? Because honestly, it’s not enough to say I’m sorry. Sorry is just a first step, the next step is doing better. (Hence, self-examination.) As I say to my son, making mistakes is inevitable in life. What’s important is what we do when we make them and whether we learn from them or proceed to just do them all over again. And sometimes self-examination means removing yourself from the space and allowing people space to breathe. I know, it feels drastic. But it’s not for others to appease me if I am the cause of discomfort. It’s my job to do the work so I can be in community again.

I’m writing as I process these things because I want to make space in my head to write about Maison the Faux’s The Tail (not giving away spoilers) and I also want to make space to write about Nisi Shawl’s excellent Everfair. I’m 40% in! And as one of my dear friends said with a laugh: “Rochita, this is how I know you are reading on a kindle reader because you don’t tell me what page you’re on but you’re telling me you’re so many percent into a book.” (You can laugh now. Times have certainly changed.)

If you’d like to sponsor me during the Clarion West write-a-thon, here’s the link:

Rochita’s Write-a-thon page

Blessings and peace and thanks again for dropping by.

(I actually inserted that button because I have no graphics for the page and wordpress won’t let me embed the page.)

Returning to the world of the Body Cartographer

/ RCRuiz

Sometime in August, the English version of the story published in De Komeet is going up on Philippine Genre Stories. I’m very grateful to Mia Tijam for her patience with me as replies have been often delayed. I have a tendency to think I have done things and find out I haven’t. Chemo-brain sounds like an easy excuse, but this tendency is common with a lot of people who’ve gone through chemotherapy. It gets better with time and the longer you’re away from the last chemotherapy treatment, the more clarity you get as well. So I am very thankful for the gentle nudges and the patience coming from editors during the period I was in treatment as well as the period of recovery.

The publication of this story works like a jumpstart of sorts. I started thinking about the works in progress that I still had on my drive and when the call to join the Clarion West Write-a-thon landed in my inbox, I carefully considered whether I would be able to do it. A conversation I had with Marielle (Wegbree)made me think that the write-a-thon would give me an easy way to slide back into writing with some accountability. I thought that I could at least do some book reviews on the blog as a measure of how much work I was doing. But in the process, I found myself returning to my one drive. I had this idea that the drafts I’d been working on were still quite messy.

My first thinking was to go back to writing in the world of Raissa and Anghe. But somehow I found myself pulled back into the Body Cartographer’s world. (If anyone wants to read Song of the Body Cartographer, it’s still available online.) After my first round with radiation therapy, I started working on this long piece again except somehow it felt almost confronting. Mainly because it starts with the main character waking up after a moment of crisis, after a near death experience that changes her so much that she is no longer exactly as she was. Yep. I wrote those parts before I was diagnosed and continuing to write those parts felt too close, I had to put it away.

But now, six months after being declared in remission and after being told that the last treatment worked, I find myself drawn back into that world and I recognise the place my main character is at. Having a deeper understanding of what it takes to recover from crises and how life-altering that can be helps me to also see where I was making the journey to recovery too smooth for my character. But I also see how this crises doesn’t define my character. It has to become part of her life if she’s to really live her life. And I am reminded again of my oncologist telling me: you are more than cancer.

We are more than the physical challenges that we face. We are more than the crises we have had to overcome. We are more than our traumas and our illnesses. We are more than that. And so I want my main character to reach that realisation too because loss has been very much a part of this character’s life but those losses do not define her. Instead, I hope that she emerges stronger and more herself.

I’m thinking about worlds today because I’m going back to the team I’m working with and I think we are going to set world parameters or at least I hope we are. I would very much like to get away from the D&D model and I am hoping that this is a shared vision. If it’s not then I have to think on whether I’m okay with that and how to go about that. Of the games that I’ve played, the one that appeals the most to me is a game built on Belonging outside Belonging. I love it for the spontaneous creativity that it gives rise to–and yes unpredictable silliness which even if you know it’s silly, you just go with it because it is fun to be silly with friends.

So I suppose July is building up to be a month of lots of thinking and reading and writing happening. Something I would not have been able to predict a couple of months ago when I was down in the dumps about not being able to write. I am evidence that the Recovery and Balance programme pays off in spades.

Finally, if you’d like to support my quest to raise funds for Clarion West, please feel free to visit my fundraising page and press the donate button. I would love for us to go over our combined goal as that means more support for the workshop and the writers who will be going there. WordPress doesn’t seem to support embedding my page, but here’s the link to it:

https://givebutter.com/2025cw-writeathon/rochitaloenenruiz

Thanks so much for taking the time to read. I am quietly surprised when I discover people have read what I write here. I hope it offers some food for thought, some inspiration or anything that you can take with you on the journey. Blessings and peace and thank you for dropping by.

Thinking about co-creation

/ RCRuiz

Traveling to and from destinations is helping me catch up with my reading list. I find it sometimes surprising when I recognise how much traveling I’m doing. I live very close to a train station and from here it’s easy to catch a train to Amsterdam or Utrecht or Rotterdam or The Hague. I haven’t been to The Hague in a while and my library card has lapsed, but I want to return to writing and reading in the Royal Library sometime late in July after the projects I’m involved with have moved into the summer holiday phase. I also want to think more around what I want to do when the season starts up again. What is necessary to me? What do I want to keep on doing? What do I need to let go of and what do I need to prioritise?

I’m currently working together with a team that was put together with the goal of creating a table top rpg. It’s a process that’s new to most of us, but one of our team is an experienced Game Master and that helps the process along as we think around gameplay and building something that is interesting, fun and hopefully thought-provoking. We’ve been thinking around themes that we want to see as well as the kind of world and stories we hope to explore.

It’s a process that I needed time to wrap my head around as perhaps the biggest difference between writing alone and writing in the team is the work of coming to agreement. There’s also the process of making space for how we will not always agree and how we are fine with that.

We might fall into thinking that co-creation is some harmonious zen process. It can be, but by large it depends on the size of the team, it depends on the kinds of participants and the dynamics in a group, it depends on a lot of factors so co-creation can be as zen or as gnarly and messy as all get out, but it needs to be what it needs to be and there is no way to go around that and effectively co-create. I realise that going through the gnarly mess is a good thing. It’s good when we are able to show our faces to each other, to say: I don’t agree with you on this and I don’t want things to go in this direction and I actually would like to go elsewhere. When that kind of freedom exists, that holds a promise of something extraordinary coming into being.

Co-creation is a process that takes time because when we are creating together, it means we have to give a little and be willing to compromise in order to reach our common goal. I don’t think it can be hurried along and I think the best thing we take away from such engagements is how creating together allows us to quickly move away from surface and shallow niceties into spaces where we feel safe and seen and where we know that just because our thoughts and ideas are not shared by everyone, it doesn’t mean they are of lesser importance.

[Some questions I’m thinking around in relation to the work and the projects I’m working on: Do we want to build community? Do we want to share stories? Do we want to heal ourselves? What do we need and what do we want and how do we get there?) ]

At the heart of it, co-creation has to do with relationships. It’s related to how we’re entangled and connected to one another. If we are open and ready to make space for ideas and ways of thinking that are not the same to how we think and if we are willing to let go of control or if we are willing to step into the gap when we recognise a gap. Does this then mean that there is no space for individuality or for the individual choice?

I like to think that there can be room for both. That we can share and compromise and adapt while leaving space and room for ourselves to do and to create and to work around what speaks to us individually. I think that leaving space for individuals to come to terms with what works and what doesn’t is necessary if we want to come to satisfying conclusions.

I’m ruminating on this because creating world in a team feels very actual to the discussion around co-creation and I also am interested in how that translates into community building and creating together outside of fiction spaces.

Where ttrpg is concerned, we can try to think of directions in which we want players to go towards, but we can’t control or predict and while we can prepare for some scenarios, it’s quite possible that players will go towards outcomes we don’t expect or even want and that’s perfectly fine. I like to think that’s a good thing because there should definitely be room for insights and outcomes other than what we want.

Perhaps the most important takeaway for me from this process is to let go of the self that goes: ‘oh but actually’. Instead, I should just let the part of me that carries on snarky and whacky conversations with my other parts come out and play.

Throughout this writing, I keep thinking of that phrase from Donna Haraway from Staying With the Trouble: “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

Blessings and peace to you who read this and maraming salamat for passing by.

Staying with the Trouble is available from Duke University Press and from other booksellers.

(editing to add my thanks to Aliette de Bodard and Vida Cruz-Borja for listening to me while I worked through this process.)

De Nederlandse Norm van Gezond Bewegen or the Dutch standard for healthy activity

/ RCRuiz

After the exercise portion of our physiotherapy class today, we spent time thinking on what healthy activity meant to us and what plans we could make for ourselves now that recovery and balance classes are coming to an end.

All through the various phases of treatment, from surgery to recovery from surgery through radiotherapy and chemo and immunotherapy, I had more or less been able to maintain some form of exercise. Whether it was walking 10,000 steps a day or going to physiotherapy class, I was able to do that. But the last round that I had with chemo depleted my stores so much that I sometimes felt frustrated by my inability to be stronger. I kept telling myself that I would get stronger.

For more than a year, oncological physiotherapy served like a tether or a safety net. Sure, I wasn’t very strong, but I was doing something and that gave me a feeling of some control.

At one point, I said to our physiotherapist: I probably just have to accept that it is what it is.

Thankfully, she didn’t agree. Thankfully, she suggested that I go on to recovery and balance class which was more intense, but she believed it was the best class to get me to where I wanted to be.

As recovery and balance class nears a close, I am thankful. Even when I grumbled about how hard the class was, I now have the tools I need to balance myself. Today, I was surprised to find that I can do a full plank again. Doing the plank helped me recognise that I can trust my body to carry me and as long as I listen to what my body is saying, I can know that it will continue to serve me well.

Writing this, I have to think about a feisty woman who must have been just a little bit older than me. She was in my first physiotherapy class, but opted not to continue with classes focused on oncological patients.

“It becomes comfortable,” she said. “You get stuck in that grove of belonging with patients who are in recovery, but you have to get out of it. You have to move out of that comfortable space.”

While our physiotherapist didn’t say the exact same words today, they had a similar resonance.

“You’ve built up your core strength, we’ve talked through how to balance and where to go if you need support. Another three months of oncological physiotherapy won’t benefit you more than going out and taking up the challenge of being active again on your own.”

So, even though the option exists to continue in a similar space, I have decided to leave the comfort of being in a space where everyone has been through similar experiences. In some ways, it’s scary. But in other ways, I realise this is a natural progression. As we leave our comfortable spaces, we discover new things. Our horizon expands. We discover new strengths and we learn that we have the capacity to continue to grow and to become even stronger than we are now.

It’s okay to retreat into our cozy spaces from time to time, but we’re not meant to dwell there. We’re meant to be out in the world. Living and thriving and growing and sharing and becoming all that we are meant to be.

(NNGB: 30 minutes a day of active movement whether brisk walking or biking with a normal bike or briskly walking up and down the stairs when done 5 days a week are considered healthy activity. There are other parameters of course, but basically 30 minutes of daily movement is good for you. Movement makes you more resilient and studies have shown that it prolongs life expectancy.)

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

Stable

/ RCRuiz

Everyone who’s had a brush with cancer is familiar with scanxiety. Last week, I had a new scan but I was able avoid being anxious about it as last week’s schedule was so packed. It wasn’t until I was reminded that my oncologist would call with the results that I started to feel some of the usual tension.

Traveling back and forth from Amsterdam, and going to the VU for Spring School was so inspiring and invigorating. I felt like I was back to being more like myself before the diagnosis and all the treatments.

But yesterday came around and I felt a little bit of tension waiting for the phone call. To keep myself from checking my file and making my own interpretations of things that aren’t my expertise, I proposed traveling to an art shop to pick up more paper. I have a thing about paper. Even before I ventured into artmaking, paper has always been a fascination for me. I have a bit of thing for notebooks and have a preference for unlined ones that don’t have bright white pages. I can’t explain why, I just do.

Anyway, my oncologist called towards the end of the afternoon. By the time the call came, I was so engrossed in trying to make sense of my messy filing system that I was a bit surprised. So when she told me that it was good news and my scans were stable, I was a little bit unsure how to feel about it. I mean…last time the news was surprising and wonderful. Despite being out of treatment for almost five months, the remaining nodules continued to shrink. Now, six months later, we are stable.

What does it mean?

In a practical sense, my oncologist said that we’ll just go on as we are and she’ll schedule another scan towards end of July. My scans take place every two months as I am being monitored in the context of a clinical trial.

A friend said to me that it’s a good thing to be constantly under medical supervision. That they have another friend who pays out of pocket to have scans done every six months because they’ve been declared cured and dismissed out of the system. The thing is, being declared cured doesn’t really mean much because you never know. I can understand this. I was declared cured once, except a few months later, I wasn’t really.

Stable.

It’s good news and yet I wept a little bit. I want so much for the remaining nodules to be just gone. But stable is good. It means there is no growth. It means I can slowly start to dream again. I can think of enrolling in another art class. I can think of committing again to the work that I’m doing with LIMBO. I can think of doing more for the community and I can give more in terms of attention, focus and energy. I like this me who is present and focused.

And so, I’m piecing together the histories of my life and I’m thankful that even though the files on my computer are messy, my work is there to remind me that I was reaching for something before cancer happened. I can’t go back, but I can move forward.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. We can only do what we can do in this moment. In this now. My encouragement is to live life to the fullest. Be present now and (cliche as it sounds) be the difference that you want to see in the world.

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

From my desk: A small relaxing play with watercolors.

Things I’m thinking about today

/ RCRuiz

The past week has been quite intense and quite busy as I traveled back and forth from home to Amsterdam. The travel is a little more than an hour and when I get to the station I’m supposed to be at, it takes another 10-12 minutes before I’m at my destination.

Last week, I was at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for most of the week where I participated in the Spring School Co-Creation Lab. This was the first Spring School held at the Faculty of Social Sciences and I believe the intention is to have a repeat of this every year for a period of time. The effect of what’s taking place in the US was quite visible at Spring School as events over there made it impossible for one of the invited guests to travel to us in Amsterdam.

It did give me a chance to talk about science fiction, visionary worldbuilding and science fiction as an instrument that can be used for thinking through issues that concern us and then we did a collaborative world-building exercise.

In asking the questions around collaborative exercises, it reminded me once again that in the work we do where we want to bend the needle towards justice and equality, it’s necessary to remember what our community’s vision is. To consult and collaborate and work together even when the outcome is not what we expected. It reminded me too that in the kind of work that we do where we seek to advocate for and are working for communities on the margins, listening and paying attention are some of the most important things that we can bring to the table. (There are a number of other things too like love and acting on the principle of seeing each other as Kapwa, as connected, as human.)

For myself, attending Spring School made me realise that I have to face up to my own responsibility to my written work. One of the comments I read somewhere said that a lot of the links on my website led to dead-ends and it looked like I hadn’t updated in a while. This is, in fact, true. For a long time, I didn’t have the energy or the focus to update this space. I knew the links were dead-ends, but I kept thinking: who cares anyway?

From listening to the conversations around me, I realised that it was important to keep an accounting and a documentation of things I’d written and published. Not only for me, but also because it might help someone else down the line. So, I found myself searching through my disorganised drive, trying to locate as many of the columns that I wrote for Movements as well as other non-fiction work that I had written around change, decolonisation practice and women’s work. (I’m compiling them to create a pdf that can be downloaded for anyone interested in reading. Suggestions are welcome as to how I can make it available as I’m new to this.)

As I was reviewing the work I’d written, I found myself quite emotional. I remembered how a lot of the non-fiction work that I did is what supported our family through the most difficult periods when Jan didn’t have any work and often pay from whatever writing I managed to get published was what helped keep the children fed. Interestingly, my kids don’t seem to remember that time as a time of hardship. It was more like: we ate noodles for a week and it was great!

Writing this my heart aches because I know there are parents at this time who despair because there is nothing to feed their children with. There are parents who don’t even know if their children will survive to see another day, and there are children without parents to worry over them. Having noodles for an entire week sounds like heaven when food supply has been cut off or withheld by the powers that be. What’s happening in Gaza, what’s happening in Sudan, what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening in all the places where war and oppression are taking place happens to all of us and we cannot allow ourselves to become numb or to look the other way.

For those of us who live in places of privilege where there is no war or famine or fear of rockets detonating over our heads, while we may not be able to jump on activist boat like Greta Thunberg, we can still do something. We can listen. We can advocate. We can bear witness.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. May we ever be striving to move the needle towards what is just and true and may we recognise how we are connected in our humanity.

There is so much I want to write

/ RCRuiz / 2 Comments

There is so much I want to write and there is no way to make the writing short or light or easy or quiet. My thoughts are like waves rising and falling–in constant motion.

I have an ocean drum. A small one that I want to use and share and bring along.

I hold the drum in my hand and listen as the pellets roll around. A loud noise. A crescendo and decrescendo.

Like my feelings and my thoughts.

I know I am much better because I feel the restless yearning tide rising and reaching towards change.

Why can’t borders be porous? Who do we need borders for?

Why does it take us so long to take action? Why do we remain in inertia?

There is so much happening. There is so much injustice going on.

How can we justify genocide? How can we justify war?

What difference does it make? Someone asks. What difference can I make?

My thoughts rise and fall, like waves.

In my head, I stand on the edge of the shore. I dig my feet in the sand and feel the grains between my toes.

From where we are, what we are doing seems so small.

The ocean is big and wide. Our doing is a drop tinier even than a drop of sand. But if we join all our doings together, all these doings could become the shore.

Letting go of perfection

/ RCRuiz

After a while, the portrait I’d been wrestling with made me feel so dissatisfied, I decided to turn its face away from me. Maybe it was the colours I’d been using, maybe it was because I needed a break, but the more I worked on it, the more I felt as if I wasn’t getting anywhere near where I wanted to be. It’s funny to write this when during my last entry, I felt as if I’d had a breakthrough.

So, I decided to step away from the portrait. I didn’t work on it for a couple of days. I didn’t even look at it. I played with my watercolours and didn’t require myself to do anything that was like a project.

There wasn’t really much time to dwell because I had the regular check-up which consists of a bloodwork and a CT scan. I didn’t have time to dwell on the CT-scan because my youngest son was leaving for the traditional end-of-school holiday (it’s a Dutch thing where young people go on holiday with their mates at the end of senior high). It’s kind of difficult to stress about a scan when you’re making sure that your son won’t miss his flight and it’s kind of difficult to stress about a portrait when you remember you have to go to the hospital.

After a busy couple of days, I decided I needed a break. I made a date to meet up with my eldest son in the city and we went shopping for some things (in my case it was art supplies).

The great thing about taking such a break is how there’s time to think while on the train ride to and from the big city. I thought about that little voice that makes tiny sounds of disapproval in the back of our heads. We don’t register it as disapproval because we’re so used to hearing it. It’s a voice that says: Oh, that’s not good enough. Oh, that nose doesn’t look right. Oh, are you sure you want to use that shade of red? Oh. Now you’ve done it. You’re overworking it. You’re doing it all wrong. You’ll never be good at this.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a painting or a story or a book report, our first and harshest critic is that tiny voice that causes us to tense up and become so focused on being perfect we end up helplessly throwing our hands up in the air and saying: I cannot.

There’s a great little clip I stumbled upon on youtube where a pianist is playing one of Chopin’s etudes (I forget the name but it’s one my mom played a lot). Over a section of the clip with the beautiful cascading tones of the piano, there’s a caption: What the audience hears when the pianist plays this piece. Right after this, there’s a section where the notes are clanging together in disharmony. The caption says: what the pianist hears when playing this piece.

It’s a funny clip, but it’s so apt. It doesn’t matter what art form we practice. Whether it’s making music or making art or writing, somehow we tend to hyperfocus on that one thing that just isn’t working. And it’s all that tiny little self-critical voice will let us focus on.

I laugh as I write this because it seems like this is a lesson that keeps returning to me. In the chase after an elusive perfection, we lose sight of what makes us love the things that we do.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Thank you for dropping by.

You cannot rush a painting

/ RCRuiz / 3 Comments

Soon after I completed my short course in painting portraits with acrylics, I got my first commission to make one. As it was commissioned by close family, I’m not sure if it qualifies as proper commission, but I agreed to make one for the equivalent of another course on painting portraits with watercolours. I don’t know why I had the idea that I could complete a portrait in a week when it took me almost five weeks to work on my class assignment, but hey–time is like an accordion to the neurodivergent mind. So, I delayed starting on the portrait. I did a couple of studies and for some reason my brain registered this as: I have completed the assignment (which of course is far from true).

Anyway, the start of watercolour class was announced and in the lead up to it, I found myself completely immersed in this completely new to me medium. Of course, I had played with watercolours as a child. But I never quite liked it. I found out that it wasn’t my fault, but it was because I didn’t have the proper tools for making good watercolours. Ha! I find myself wondering how many children give up on artmaking because they just don’t have the right tools. Of course–as people say–artists will find ways and means to make art and when I look back, I realise that I was always making art. It wasn’t art in the conventional/traditional sense of how people in my surroundings defined art (art=painting). I wasn’t painting, but I was constantly busy with cutting and pasting and layering things. I was curious about things that were discarded and what could be done with them. When I was a teen, I started using threads and cast away materials. I dried weeds and made cards. I collected pieces of thrown away marble flooring and tried writing on them. Eventually, I combined these with other things and the small projects I started in my parents’ garage bloomed into quite a hectic business. (I confess, I didn’t like it as much once it became hectic business and that probably says a lot about me.)

So anyway, back to the title of this blogpost.

The reason why I was asked to make this portrait was because the portrait I made in class came out so well. Getting it there took me sitting at the easel almost everyday. Carefully observing my reference photos and decided which colours were best. It was me also remembering the way my cousin’s smile looked and what it was about her character that I wanted to capture on the canvas. And the portrait succeeded because I knew my subject really really well. I could close my eyes and see the way she walks, the way she tilts her face to the side, the way shadows play across her face and most of all, I could see the gentleness and the joy shining through her eyes. And that’s what I put on the canvas. As one of my classmates said: she makes me want to smile back at her.

Back to this portrait. On the first day, I did the drawing and filled in light and dark hues. I had my colour palette, and yet somehow it wasn’t working. At the end of day one, I had a stern looking figure on my canvas and another figure who looked like an alien. Skin tone was nowhere near anything human. I stared at the portrait and thought: I think I’ll just go back to using pastels and watercolours. Those are more fun.

Second day: I’m one day away from my self-set deadline. Anything I layer on makes my figures look even more alien. They no longer look anything like the reference picture. Even worst, the main figure looks so unlikeable and scary, I want to throw my brushes on the floor and burn the canvas. I don’t do these things, but I admit I was pretty close.

Self-set deadline day: The portrait is not finished. I don’t know how I’ve managed to turn two humans into beings who look like they’ve come from Mars. I no longer think of them as people. I think of them as subjects–characters who refuse to bend to my will. My paints and brushes keep going, but good grief, my instruments are not making magic happen.

Thankfully, I’m given a reprieve. I don’t have to deliver the portrait just yet. But the person would like to see an in-progress work.

I’m crying. I can’t show this horrible canvas to anyone.

I go to bed and pray. Dear God, I say. Please (please please) I know this is such a tiny ping in all the important things happening around the world, but if you could send me a dream–something that will help me resolve this, I would be ever so grateful.

Here is a detail I remember from my dream. I’m a child crying over this portrait and I’m sitting at the feet of this big person. You need time to make a painting, the big person says. Each layer makes a painting richer, this is why you can’t rush a painting. Look, you should try using yellow ochre and don’t be afraid to mix your colours with white.

I don’t know if there was more, but when I wake up, that remains with me.

I head up to the attic and start squeezing colours onto my palette. Yellow ochre and white and my basic colours. I decide to not use the flesh coloured paint that I’d used previously. I don’t know if it will work, but I start painting. And somehow, things just click into place. The main character now looks kinder and more approachable–just like the person I see when I leaf through the album in my head. The second character looks kind and inquiring–and his skin looks human. I mix in some cadmium yellow, a bit of red…it’s coming together. Burnt sienna and ultramarine blue and some of that white for my shadows. It’s intense, but looks natural. I’m not quite there, but now the painting has more flow.

I think of how the things worth bringing into the world cost time and effort and energy. The act of creating something asks something from us and gives something to us as well. Maybe AI could make a painting much faster than I could, but I wouldn’t be getting the same insights I get from making this painting myself. Everything worth bringing into the world is worth the journey that it takes to bring it into being. And this is why we can’t rush art. We can’t rush stories. And I can’t rush a painting.

To you who have taken the time to stop by and read this, I hope you find something to inspire you on your own journey. Thank you for reading and may you be blessed.

The study I made in preparation for the painting. 🙂

Create and co-create

/ RCRuiz

On my wall, there’s a postcard with the words: Create the things you wish existed. It’s a card that came with an order of art supplies and I loved the words so much I pasted it up where I can see it as a reminder.

From one of the mailing lists that I subscribe to, there’s a link to the work of an amazing artist named Leilah Babirye. If you have time, click on the link leading to the video as it’s so inspiring and a great reminder that when we are engaged in art, we can’t be afraid.

I’m thinking about this as I think about LIMBO and the participants who come to share and create together. More than the things that we produce or make during the time together, it’s about how we hold space for one another and create together the kind feeling that exists in that time. When it’s my turn to give the workshop, I step into the space and think about who’s here and what do they need. Where Leilah talks about reading and listening to the piece, facilitating means listening to the space and reading with the heart. I bring to the workshop all the things that I have learned from other practitioners and I bring also what I have learned from my own journey.

Yesterday, we engaged in making rhythmic combinations, dance steps and improvisations as well as song. I had in mind this idea that we needed to give an answer to the wishlist that had been presented by participants sometime at the start of the season–the wish to create a LIMBO dance as well as a song that comes from us and expresses us.

There was laughter, there was singing, there was lots of body movement and dancing and there was a beautiful musical rendition gifted to us that afternoon by one of LIMBO’s participants.

I love how moments like these give rise to spontaneous sharing. It’s a testimony to how participants feel safe to talk about what they’re going through and what they’re feeling in the moment. To me, it’s this precious quality that we need to take care of when we talk about community.

Today, I am thankful for the privilege of being invited and included in this community. One of the things I’ve learned and continue to be reminded about in LIMBO is how it doesn’t matter that there are moments of discomfort and unease–that sometimes topics can become fraught–that people will have differences. But this is okay. I think of Aminata Cairo talking about family gatherings and how there may be that uncomfortable relation who can get argumentative and you think: Oh, I will just keep a distance. But even so, if we believe we are all connected, then there is still space for discomfort. We don’t always need to resolve it, but we can acknowledge it.

(I want to note here that I do think it’s important to draw a line at abusive and harmful behaviour.)

At present, I’m already looking toward our next gathering which will be on the 1st of June. I’m thinking of how to approach this workshop as we prepare for the launch of LIMBO’s second booklet. For the launch, which will be on the 20th of July, we’ll be going back to FramerFramed as a podium has been offered to us for use against the backdrop of an exhibition about transformation. It’s so very apt. I’m thinking of festive feelings. Of glitter make-up and shiny clothes, of dancing and singing and color and joy. We’ll be creating this programme together, creating this launch, creating this space and holding it for one another.

To you who read this, take time to listen to a beat and move your feet. Thank you for stopping by. Blessings and peace be with you.