Hi! How has your week been?
Yesterday my daughter, my nephew and I arrived home in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. My two weeks in my far-north hometown have come to an end, and we’ll be spending the month of August mixing the necessities of work with the pleasures of having a good time in the outdoors.
I had not been home in two years so my return to Whitehorse was a jumble of mixed feelings. Although I was excited to be in the feral landscape I grew up in, I was also curious about how I’d feel and slightly reticent to return.
Two weeks in my hometown was just enough time for me to go through a range of different experiences.
My first four days felt very weird. Everything that was familiar was also quite unfamiliar. Two years away had given the town a chance to change in subtle ways – new condominiumss had popped up, old funky homes were knocked down and ugly boxy ones had popped up like mushrooms. The coffeeshop I had worked in 12 years ago did a renovation, after a lifetime of being the same. For all the uglification, there was also the beautiful.
Waterfront walking trails were developed, and people were constantly walking and cycling along them, smiling and friendly. New thoughtful shops had opened. Cultural events were booming.
The beautiful small-town feeling of walking around downtown and running into people without having to seek them out was abundantly evident.
Then, after the first four days, things started to feel more familiar. I put my rose-coloured blinders on and fell in love with the minutiae of beautiful detail – all the reasons why I love my hometown and the circumpolar north felt so clear, and eventually, it began to feel like my two years away in the lush and verdant Cowichan Valley was a brief dream, that I had never left the Yukon.
And now, here I am, back in the Valley, and my northern visit is the fleeting thought.
I find it so interesting how time can expand and contract depending on our current experiences, presence of mind and states of consciousness. How is it that two years contracts into a nighttime dream and two weeks stretches to an infinity then back into a daydream once I’ve left?
What I have noticed is that when I am in a state of flow, I am living in the creative and existential space of ‘being in the moment’.
My memory seems to function more poorly yet my experiential facilities engage more deeply – I am so very much in the moment that the moments before and after cease to carry any weight at all.
I have also discovered that my creative process is very much like this too – when I am deep in a creative project there is nothing else going on in my world and time stretches out to contain a depth of focus and delight, an infinity of experience and time is contained within that creative moment.
It’s such an incredible place to be in and I seek it out and facilitate ways of being in it so that I can luxuriate.
As usual, I’m curious about your experiences. Have you had experiences of flow where time seems to change all the rules? Have you had moments of going back home where things felt strange and yet familiar at the same time?
Until next time,
Janelle
ps – I just discovered instagram and I have to say it’s a new favourite. I much prefer it to facebook and have been having fun learning how to post and hashtag ( # ) images. Come over and follow my instagram feed.
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