Today is Tuesday, and again I am one day later dear readers. I have no more excuses than admitting that I have completely forgotten about the blog yesterday. Simply forgotten and this morning in the shower I remembered.
What happened…
I have started writing daily since last week. To my great surprise it is going somehow steadily, and there is a flow, not much resistance, enough appetite, and just about well balanced patience. I am able to stop when my brain gets foggy, and I grant myself some time to sit outside, or have tea, or just take a short nap.
The process of the book is developing and the point where I am is very interesting. At least it is for me. My thinking took me as far as convincing me that I should write three books parallely. No matter how ambitious this may sound, even to me, I have accepted this idea and even if there won’t be 3 books in the end, the experience of going through this process is fascinating for me.
Let me explain
I am working on books 1,2 and 3. Book 2 is the book that I am actually working on, and whenever there is a part that belongs to Book 1 or Book 3 I switch to the other document and write.
I would love to explain to you what all this is about, but I can’t yet, because it is too early. However, the content of Book 2 is based on all the lectures and my notes produced during the Somatic Dialogue Facilitator Training Programs 1 and 2. That means a sum of 84 lessons and 14 workshops a total of 45 days. This has produced over 900 pages of written material, and I will spare you the recordings.
This Book 2 is the documentation of this process, and the 2 other books are derived from this documentation.
I am myself a little taken aback while writing this, realising how much work this is, but at the same time, I feel it is a magical liberating work, being in the process of writing and crystalising, cutting, changing and re-arranging and most of all remembering. I am in a way in the process of becoming independent from this work, while writing about it.
This is only the first draft of course. And it is only the first level of this process.
Remembering again
During last week's writing marathon, I was remembering a lot of our cat, Toby, or as my husband also named him Tobislav. Toby joined our family one Christmas eve and with him our life changed. He was black, furry, with yellow-green eyes and very handsome. As handsome as he was, he was a very calm, gentle and tolerant cat. Sofia-Su (our daughter) took the role of her one and only tutor, taking Toby through reading lessons, Vet workshops, how to become the best playing companion, tea parties and watching animation movies together. She has really contributed in raising Toby’s patience to the level of that of a prophet.
Somehow during this last week the memory of Toby came to me on a daily basis. I felt his little body on mine, my hand caressing his majestuous collar fur, feeling his purring on my legs… my whole body went through a little dance of remembering.
And of course this brought me to the theme of remembering again.
Remembering can be a conscious process even when it kicks off unexpectedly. I suddenly remembered Toby, and then chose to stay with the memory, went through his photos, and each photo took me to the sensation of that moment, in which I was present.
And this brings me to the thought that we can remember pleasantly when we are able and allow ourselves to forget. I feel that not being able to forget, not allowing ourselves to forget something that has happened prevents us from becoming independent from that memory, but also prevents us from being able to experience a positive, healing or repairing effect of remembering.
Forgetting and remembering
My intellectual memory has never been too strong. Not like some intellectual friends I have, and admire. However I have complete trust in my sensational memory, my body’s memory. And I know from my experience that forgetting is a crucial phenomenon in having a healthy relationship with sensational or body memory.
I feel that between forgetting and remembering is a dance, a dance that is built on distance, the further the dancing couple is from each other, the finer they have to work on the connection. They come closer to refresh, but then distance themselves from each other through various dance steps. This reminds me right now of some of Argentina’s folk dances, so beautifully poetic, a perfect metaphor for the relationship between man and woman.
My writing process is full of forgetting and remembering
Since I have been writing on a daily basis for more than a week, I have realised that I am constantly in this dancing relationship with my own work. Going over the notes and the lessons, I realise how able and perfect I have been in forgetting my own words. What came out then, stayed there in that time. Luckily it was recorded and although I have transcribed the first cycle of notes myself, my memory has not stored anything that has been written there.
I am in the process of meeting my own thoughts swimming in oblivion. Meeting them also awakens other memories of the process: the voice of my colleague, the movement of a participant, the emotions flowing in my body while observing a class.
And I trust my memory, I trust the re-discovery of a lived memory in my body. All those notes are vivid in me and retrieving them is a wonderful new encounter. This encounter is a potential for new thoughts and ideas to emerge from mysterious places.
And how about you dear reader?
What do you remember today? Can you consciously trace a memory and grant it a visit to yourself? What have you forgotten? And what is hard to forget?
I invite you to think about forgetting and remembering…
…hoping that we will always remember to love, and love better.
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