Shivers of deep resonance

You’re about to experience a collision.
I hope you walk away with clarity, confusion, both, or none.
I don’t know where the winds are blowing yet,
but there’s a shift coming to this blog.
Consider this a reflection of the uncertainty.
Consider it art rather than thought.

I’ve been having problems with the word “balance”. Actually, I’ve been having problems with a lot of words. Concepts. Ideas. Beliefs. I’m near the end of a significant operating system update that started when I was in the white room as a continuation of something that started six years ago.

“Balance” doesn’t resonate anymore even though it used to hang from the edge of my mouth like a toothpick worn as a status symbol. In a world that I perceived as dominated by black-and-white thinking, I was always proud of my inclination towards balance. The more external voices pushed me to have one opinion, the more I held onto my neutral position. You’d rarely find me defaulting to one perspective, I’d always want to know all the others. I’m still resistant to picking a side.

Of course, I received shit for this because we prefer simplified stories and opinions. Either this or that. You’re either with us or against us. Being in the middle means you don’t stand for anything. There is no room for both, no room for interpretation, uncertainty, or the freedom to change your mind. Very binary and inflexible. Useful, nonetheless, but over-reliance on this pattern of thinking has pushed me into rabbit holes I didn’t really want to be in.

I was in one such rabbit hole when I was living in Cambridge, United Kingdom (no, not studying at the university). I was walking down memory lane sorting through photos; I lingered on this period. I remember being unhappy and stuck, which is funny because I went there to get myself unstuck. Years after this stuckness, I sat on the edge of my bed wondering why I was so miserable at the time. So much beauty and art came into my life in Cambridge that shifted my perspective but I’m only seeing this now. I’m only witnessing the shift now.

i’ve been held captive by a longing.

a yearning for something unfamiliar,
ancient and untamed.

When someone is miserable, there are usually two extreme paths one can take: you either stay at home and wallow in the misery or compulsively get out of the house to override the misery with activities and novelty. By nature, I belong to the first category. I don’t believe in bypassing negative feelings through external stimuli; it’s important for me to sit with my feelings and process them in solitude. But as with many things, the optimal path is somewhere in between, and I found it at Kettle’s Yard on a grey day in spring.

Thinking of this gallery in a cottage on Castle Street still makes me smile ¹. A visit takes you through the home of Jim and Helen Ede — a curator, ‘friend to artists’, and an art teacher. You experience art, objects found and made in familiar environments — next to the bath tub or near a pile of books. It’s different to walking through a typical contemporary art gallery.

When you walk into a huge space with white walls, you inadvertently get into this performative mode of “I’m here to look at art and appreciate it”. You end up assigning a form to the visit too soon by going in with a specific mindset, even if you believe it to be open. It pushes you to try too hard and paradoxically, you end up not really experiencing the art but inspecting it like an examiner. There’s less room for being relaxed and surprised.

Strolling through a relatable environment and not knowing where you’ll see the art and how it will be presented removes the cold intimidation around it. It’s replaced with playful mystery. I remember being very pleasantly surprised at Kettle’s Yard. I remember being filled with warmth.

To someone who loves being at home and considers it a sanctuary, meandering around someone else’s home was a special experience, sacred even. A home is something we can all relate to, and I loved seeing it transformed into something unique through the eyes of a curator. There’d be paintings hung at a peculiar height on the wall and as you’re passing by, you stop and think “interesting but why?” Then you see this comfy armchair just across the paintings. You sit down and go “ah, I see now”. The paintings are best appreciated from this chair, from this perspective.

Curation is a practice that requires the mastery of perspectives — an art of seeing and arranging that involves manipulating the space between the art, the visitor, and the environment. At least, this is what I observed that day about a practice I knew nothing about. This artful seeing echoes through the home. It became apparent to me when I stopped by the shelves of plants near a window connecting two floors. In front of the plants hangs a giant magnifying glass next to a Windsor rocking chair. You don’t need to stand in front of it to see a different perspective of the plants. The magnifier swivels gently from the momentum of the passerbys, and the leaves melt into dancing shapes as it moves. Perspectives shift as you move around the magnifier. It’s hard to see clearly through it but that’s precisely the point.

There were other small details I remember fondly, like the transparent switch covers that exposed the wiring, or objects placed in unexpected crooks and nooks. And the pieces of nature. So many rocks and pebbles. There was beauty showcased in ways you’d expect and attention drawn to beauty in unexpected places. I saw puzzles everywhere that piqued my curiosity. What’s the relationship between this feather and this bowl next to it? Is the bowl by a renowned artist or is it just a bowl? Maybe it was all designed, or all placed intuitively. The ambiguity made it all exciting ².

It’s possible that my memory is romanticizing the experience, but life without a bit of magic is what we call mundane. Art can be as potent a medicine as nature for curing a mind stuck in mud, whether consumed, practiced, or curated. At Kettle’s Yard, I witnessed the beauty of everyday life in harmony with nature and art, coexisting and co-creating the experience of the gallery with the visitors. This is where a significant shift in perspective began. This is where I first started making space for shivers of inexplicable resonance.

it’s tugging at me,
but it’s not out there.

it’s in here,
wrapped in flesh and blood.

What beliefs do you have on the pedestal? Can you bear for them to fall?

As much as I wanted to stand steady in the center, it’s difficult to resist binary thinking, and I couldn’t (still can’t) help getting involved in games of domination. I believed that “balance” was the saving grace. Sometimes, it is. But then I started to see the other side of it. Pun intended.

Let’s picture an old fashioned scale, the one used as a symbol the astrological sign Libra. How do you achieve an equilibrium on such a scale? You do it by either adding or subtracting from one side or the other. Balancing requires shrinking, adjusting, and amplifying in relation to another. It’s a noble game but one that depends on restricting and editing of true natures to achieve equilibrium. The problem with this sort of balance is that it either must stay static, which means no more addition or subtraction, or it’s a constant up and down dance. It works for a while until it tires. It’s either lifeless or requires continuous movement in one spot, like walking on a step-machine. And if you’re not careful, it ends in the destruction of whole entities in favour of a whole made of two halves.

I’ve been reading about The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru, and it’s been sending shivers of inexplicable resonance down my body. The Andean tradition emphasizes harmony over balance as a core principle in life. It believes in interconnectedness with nature and each other. Harmony, in this worldview, is achieved by allowing full expression and authenticity; it’s built on mutual respect, inherent differences, and preservation:

[B]eing in “harmony” does not mean being in “balance.” Balance is a dualistic term — we seek to equalize two things or, alternatively, to make them the same. Andeans, however, prefer to recognize inherent differences, as in Américo’s phrase “the complement of differences,” and to preserve the individuality of the two entities.

This is beautiful and a dream, and I have no idea whether it exists in reality. Isn’t that the point of beliefs though? They’re guidelines to help keep your actions and behaviors aligned instead of visions to be executed, or trophies to be obtained. Balance wasn’t what I was looking for. I was longing for peace, the kind that comes from freedom. To be free from unnecessary games of duality is what I wanted, but I guess you can’t avoid them completely.

It takes one agent to shift a perspective or change an entire worldview, and this agent of change can come in many forms. Some agents arrive like a storm, dramatic and gone before you’ve even registered the chaos. Others are gentle, a single drop sending ripples through the entire body of water.

Something was set in motion in Cambridge six years ago, and it’s coming full circle now. It may have been the moment I sat down on the chair, or the moment I looked through the magnifying glass. I’m not sure. What I’m more sure of is that change is something to be received. It doesn’t work within the boundaries of control. It can be initiated at one point but completed only when you surrender and allow yourself to be transformed with no attachment to the way or the final form.

Transformation completes when timelines collide. Then, another cycle begins.

wildness doesn’t understand labels,
it doesn’t speak in -isms.

wildness doesn’t take stances,
it just is.

it is here, nowhere, and everywhere.

freedom is right here,
nowhere, and everywhere.