With the easter holdiday break looming I have caught myself wondering just what I could do with the holiday. I notice that I have used the word 'do', and this is definately a good indicator of the kind of ordinary life I live. My days are filled with 'doing'. It's a 'doing' world, everybody is 'doing' almost constantly. Getting caught up in constant activity and being busy seems to be some sort of cultural addiction. Yet I can sense an inner desire in most of the people I know to actually 'stop doing' and take a break. The easter holiday break seemed to be the topic of conversation yesterday as I made my way through the isles of the local grocery store. There was definately a common thread of significant content in many of those conversations - people wanted a rest, a getaway, time off, a little break. I laughed as I heard a few young people whispering to each other about taking a few extra days holiday, 'taking a couple of sicky's', is the Australian slang for it. Easter is particularly good for engaging in this practice as you can tac on Thursday and Tuesday as 'sickie's' and end up with five days off. Yes, five days off from 'doing' - what a wonderful thing to look forward to.

In my moment of contemplation there I'm suddenly flooded with a few fond memories from my last easter break. At this time in my life I was going through some fairly major changes and things were very uncertain. I don't know how you the reader chooses to be with uncertainty yet I know that for myself it can be a very difficult and challenging experience. I have used the word 'chooses' as I recall that at that time I did choose how I would be with that experience. Sometimes I am aware that it's almost impossible to make a choice in regards to how I will be with myself when faced with challenges. It depends entirely on the intensity of my inner experience and whether or not I am aware of what's actually occuring for me. I cannot choose when I do not know what my experience actually is. There may be many reasons I do not know, some of which I could be partly aware of, and many that I am not aware of. I may have a sense of this state of being and I may not have. It's often quite complex in my experience, so it really actually annoys me intensily when I am confronted with 'good advice' and 'strategies' for coping with the challenges around change that are offered like quick fix receipes from many helping professionals. I don't enjoy being boxed and labelled into someone's idea, concept, or theory and then handed some universal remedy or even worse, a 'solution' to shift me out of my discomfort. I prefer to have my experience acknowledged as uniquely mine, and I prefer to be able to explore it in ways that are likely to inform me beyond the conceptual ways of coming to know things. I like multimodal knowledge or trusting the value of other ways of coming into knowing or finding meaning.

I have some practice of actually engaging myself in my own self discovery and last easter I chose to take a little time off from the pace of my ordinary working life and venture out into the bush. I already understand that 'taking time away' in a different environment gives me the space I need to grapple with what is actually occuring for me. I found a place for myself on a large rock in the middle of a beautiful white water stream at the foot of one of my favourite mountains. I sat quietly with myself and was present to my inner experience and the world that I had immersed myself in. This is what arrived for me in poetry and drawing.

How I experience my process of change

The river finds its own path

its rhythm sometimes loud and rushing

the white water crashes up against

some old rock, worn smooth by

many years of water passing by,

over, and under, and around

It’s in the white spray that the

rhythm is held but for a single moment

If I’m patient, if I can be still,

I can capture that small explosion

with a simple ‘click’, just gently

press my finger down on the

black button – right timing

sensing the moment just before it arrives

then I lay sunning myself on

that old, worn rock, still and quiet

holding the camera gently upon my chest

those captured moments I cradle

on my rising and falling breath

In another sense they drift through

my inner visual world, rich and clear

as in parts this very river I lie with drifts

shifting its flow, this way and that

I can see it in times when it’s not so full

just a small and almost soundless trickle,

the rocks steaming in a seemingly

endless heat, yet it is alive,

still beckoning, still flowing,

rain arrives beating the dusty ground,

and the dust rises just as the water did

when it hit the rock, dust and water,

rise together, I think ‘ wow ’,

what a great shot, I’m excited by the

possibility of capturing that, and

the river I have noticed in my pondering

of what might be, is filling up,

it’s cold now and rushing around my ankles

as I clamber from one rock to the next

I can feel the rush I get from the cold metal

camera with its empty film, and I’m hardly

noticing the effort of my clambering

just the magnificent sound of white

water against rock and skin

a good place I seek now to sit,

to feel, to take it all in.

This poem and the drawing that followed gave me such a depth of understanding about my own experience of 'change'. Letting go and just 'being with myself and my experience' was such a releif from 'doing'. The drawing shows me myself captured in that moment of letting go, of coming into a new understanding in regards to how I experience change. These multimodal ways of finding meaning for experience circumvent the familiar patterns of being in my life. They offer me new insight, new understanding, and I love engaging in my experience in these ways.