The rhythm of my life

On the scale of years, my life follows this rhythm: sometimes I'm on simmer, and sometimes I'm cookin' (with interludes of full boil).

When I'm on simmer I'm in an arrangement of life that's working for me -- I'm advancing my long-term goals and enjoying the present in plentiful ways. I'm also not, for the most part, grappling with any fundamental challenges in my life. I'm in the long groove. These are stable times, and each such period has been happier than the one before. I've learned to trust that there are deep goings-on in myself during these times, and that I needn't push myself to fulfill untapped potential. (Katherine Riley would be proud of me.)

Times I'd describe as cookin' are dominated by soul-searching, angst, and Action Boy (a fast reshuffle to a new paradigm that's been simmering for a long time). Historically these periods have been related either to relationships (desired or recent), or a breakdown-and-reconception of my whole life-direction. They encompass the most intensely painful and the most intensely joyful chapters of my life.

On this time-scale, I've been in a good long simmer since 2000, when I became solid with mud_puppy as my life-partner and started up my private Massage Therapy practice. This encompasses my entire time on LiveJournal, and for some of you the entire time you've known me.

This weekend my life went from simmer to cook.

More will follow. It's all new stuff -- mud_puppy and my massage practice are solider than ever.

For the moment I'll say this: I hereby declare myself to be taking a self-guided course in ritual design.

Prior appearances of ritual design in my life:

-An evening of telling stories from our own lives that I convened with three particular friends of mine.
-A Thanksgiving ritual at the Bestiary.
-A private Yule that mud_puppy and I have celebrated for many years.
-Any number of group events at my place that don't look like rituals.
-Small but critical contributions I've made to large-group rituals at pagan events.
-Not every party I've held had significant aspects of ritual design, but two 30th birthday parties and a goodbye party I can think of did.
-The Eye of Argon.
-Mao.
-The Vortex.

The last was a place (in Chicago) rather than an event and thus the subtlest item on this list. But it can't escape mention since it was also my most successful accomplishment in this category to date.

Akasha Con (first part of several)

This last weekend I was at Akasha Con, a pagan workshop gathering in Poughkeepsie, NY. It was my best group-of-classes type workshop experience ever.

I'd gotten the pointer from my beloved friend Rhea many months ago; she'd recently moved to fairly near there, and was extremely enthusiastic at the possibility of Brandi and I coming to visit her for the occasion. I'd filed it in the category of "interesting but probably not do-able due to Brandi's school."

Two weeks ago it briefly looked like Brandi was going to take the time anyway and we'd go together. When she re-decided to stay home and work on school, we agreed that it still made sense for me to go, especially saving hotel cost by staying with Rhea. I got the Friday off, hit the road in an Enterprise rental that morning, and 4-houred it to New Paltz.

Akasha Con was all indoors, had about 20 workshop teachers (only 3-4 at a time on the schedule) and about 160 people attending. All of the teachers were published authors, and many of them do $500+ classes at the Omega institute. Most of them (that I had any exposure to) were both scholarly *and* effective at creating a profound group experience -- a rare enough combo in one person, and to find it in a *majority* presenting (with no duds in the mix that I saw or heard about) is exceptional. I didn't figure out what it was, but Akasha organizer Rhianna has clearly found a way to bring folks of this caliber to an event that must generate a pittance compared to what they're used to.

Akasha Con headlined Magnus McBride and Abbi Spinner, two community elders that I admired most highly from back in the days they facilitated fire circles at Rites of Spring. An indoor fire circle was to be the peak event of the con. Those who've followed prior threads of mine about pagan gatherings will recall that the fire circle has a special attraction for me. It's a setting in which leadership is fluid and anyone can step up to hold the space, sweeten the rhythm, create possibilities with movement or voice. There is huge scope for noticing what needs doing and creating new ways to let the beautiful out.

(I'm going to spread this out rather than try to brain-dump it, since there's other things I'm keen to get started and I'm still catching up on sleep.)