02:23:53 Hello, friends. I hope you are doing good this week.
02:24:03 We're past the solstice.. And we're in cancer season.
02:24:11 Spending this time, uh, continuing to be on Coast Salish
02:24:19 Land, waters.. It is..
02:24:26 Um, he is so healing to.. continue to experience
02:24:34 Uh, the Pacific Ocean here. I am.. In a small town for..
02:24:42 2-3 days before I head back home. A place, um, that's called..
02:24:49 ch'atlich/Sechelt.. The coastline is beautiful here.
02:24:57 The mountains are beautiful. Even though it was..
02:25:01 Barely sunny my whole time on the West Coast. It has been a bit..
02:25:09 Cloudy and foggy the last couple of days. There are.. Some wildfires going on, in Squamish Nation.
02:25:21 Maybe that's a part of it.
02:25:30 New moon is in a couple days, so.. Maybe the sky will clear up a bit tomorrow, let's hope.
02:25:39 I would love to see some stars in the sky. While I'm here, but..
02:25:45 So it goes, you know? The night sky is unpredictable, as is..
02:25:54 Things that aren't, um, immediately shapeable by us puny humans in this giant cosmos.
02:26:06 Even though I can't really see a lot of stars, and it is very cloudy tonight,
02:26:12 I still tried to go out, and every moment that.. Some of the clouds would..
02:26:20 You know, leave a little crevice to see some stars, I could see, still a few stars.
02:26:27 Sometimes I.. Feel as though, as I keep looking, my eyes..
02:26:35 Adjust to that light, and I can start to see. More and more things, almost the sense that..
02:26:42 There is so much there that I'm not seeing. An occasional glimpse of how much there is.
02:26:51 Even though I can't tell if.. My imagination is just propping up what..
02:26:59 it thinks the night sky is, or.. You know, if I'm actually seeing something with my adjusted eyesight, but either way, I am..
02:27:14 Learning the ways of..
02:27:19 life here, the kin here.. I met some hummingbirds this morning.
02:27:28 Um, I think last week I mentioned that I bought a pair of new binoculars, so I've been learning how to use them.
02:27:39 This morning, I successfully saw a whole bird through it. Which was very cool. Um..
02:27:47 These birds are called rufous hummingbirds, I read that they are..
02:27:53 Um, passing by as part of migratory season in the summer,
02:27:59 here in the region where I am. Yeah, they're pretty, they've got..
02:28:08 Um, a red.. Kind of, uh, a color..
02:28:15 and their long beaks, and they're so tiny, as hummingbirds are. So much that I could see it with my naked eye, and then..
02:28:24 I still couldn't find it in my binocular unless.. I scanned it super carefully.
02:28:32 Tiny, tiny birds.. Just singing around.
02:28:37 Eating from the feeders that the people, um.. Whose, um, place I'm staying in.
02:28:44 have a bunch of stuff here. Yeah, I was just kind of standing outside.
02:28:49 The place I'm at, and peering over back at the.. Bird feeders, they have.
02:28:58 There was one further back in the backyard. And as I was scanning for birds, I suddenly saw a little slither.
02:29:09 On the.. ground, and then it turned out to be a snake. It was..
02:29:18 You know, not that big, it was a pretty.. I would guess it's a baby snake, it was..
02:29:25 Very thin.
02:29:30 I don't know. Anyway, I'm not sure how y'all are with snakes, but I'm definitely scared of them.
02:29:38 Um, but.. You know, they're out there doing their thing.
02:29:46 I just.. I thought it was quite beautiful. It was yellow and whatnot, but..
02:29:55 I also am wary, so. I mostly try to stay on the concrete, and I,
02:30:05 cross my fingers, and hope that they stay on the.. Um, sandy, grassy parts, which is where most of the wildlife tends to stay.
02:30:16 This morning, my partner and I were just walking down this ramp to get into the car to go get some
02:30:24 breakfast, and.. I was like, hey, look on your left, there's a deer there, and..
02:30:32 She turned around and was like, oh my god, I didn't even notice it. This deer just stood there
02:30:37 And was looking at us, and.. I was looking at the deer, and we were just making eye contact, and I was like, wow, we're having this whole interaction.
02:30:48 And then I passed through, and then immediately the deer crossed
02:30:55 the paths that we walk down to go to the other side, so then I realized, oh, I guess..
02:31:01 I was just blocking the way instead. I was like, oh, we're having a whole..
02:31:06 eye contact session. Anyway..
02:31:12 Yeah, what else is going on here? I am.. there are.. there are some..
02:31:17 forest trails here that I'm hoping to check out. We went to a tourism..
02:31:23 center, place, we.. Found some zines and maps, and..
02:31:28 Just.. finding some information. I learned that.. You can see these..
02:31:36 translucent Moon Jellyfish.. in the water here on clear days.
02:31:42 Even by the coastline, um, especially if you go kayaking or any of those things, so..
02:31:51 I'm not.. I don't swim, so I'm not a big water sports kind of a person.
02:31:58 But.. my partner does Kayak, so..
02:32:03 I hop on the kayak, and I pretend as though I'm also here, you know, tandem.
02:32:08 Doing my part, growing from the back, while I'm super distracted, and she is doing..
02:32:17 Most of the work. Um, which she claims that she does like to do, because she was going to kayak anyway, so..
02:32:27 She is so sweet, but I definitely have been super grateful,
02:32:34 For.. you know, just being on the water and staring at whatever it is that I'm staring at, the birds above, the..
02:32:45 hopefully, some moon jellyfish in my near future. While my partner is truly enjoying rowing the boats, let's hope.
02:32:53 Let's hope. Okay, so..
02:33:01 This week, I said that I was going to talk to you a little bit about..
02:33:07 This, um.. workshop group..
02:33:13 initiative facilitation thing that I've been trying to pull together and I've been working behind the scenes on..
02:33:20 My website a little bit.. This audio transmission series.
02:33:26 Has, um.. As I've said, it's brought so much ease in my practice of showing up to talk to y'all, and I've officially.. 
02:33:37 made it into a podcast of sorts. It's not a publicly available podcast in the way
02:33:45 of going to find it in Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or something like that.
02:33:51 But, um, if you go to my website, or.. that's.. likely where you're listening to this from. I have..
02:33:59 some links in there, and some information that. You can find..
02:34:05 to add an RSS link to your..
02:34:11 Podcast app, whatever that may be, and hopefully that should let you get the episodes on your phone, or..
02:34:22 device, podcast app thangs. Um, so that you can at least check out the episodes. There's a bunch of..
02:34:32 work to be done there, just some tech shenanigans, but.. You know, I'm trying to be incremental with it.
02:34:39 I got to.. While I was doing it, some of the theme in my website changed, so some of the colors changed. Anyway, just, you know, doing some work there.
02:34:53 I was doing some.. plotting on..
02:35:00 What the shape of.. this offering that I'm pulling together
02:35:05 is going to be like, so. Currently, um..
02:35:10 I have this seed plan for. A two-part poetry-oriented group workshop. Um, this.
02:35:21 I'm going to, um, offer that.. something that might be helpful to folks who..
02:35:29 Are already familiar with poetry, but specifically, I'm gonna.. Hope to offer something that maybe is helpful to people who 
02:35:43 feel as though poetry is this thing that you only learned in
02:35:49 Um, in terms of reading Shakespeare, or.. Whatever other..
02:35:54 you know.. mainstream, um, super..
02:36:01 A fixed form poetry, like a sonnet, or this or that, that you had to read in school, or things that made you feel as though
02:36:09 You couldn't really understand it. Or maybe you tried to read contemporary poetry, and you found that it was just indented everywhere.
02:36:19 Um, are in weird shapes, or something, and.. You were like, I don't know what this is about. What are they even saying here?
02:36:29 I know that I.. Um, you know, even though I used to read.
02:36:36 poetry when I was a kid. After..
02:36:41 After school. I didn't..
02:36:46 do very much to keep in touch with that practice, and..
02:36:49 when I read more modern poetry, I found it hard to understand what was going on.
02:36:56 until I had taken.. this creative writing poetry class last year.
02:37:05 And this year, too, I took another class, and through the process of some of these classes, but also,
02:37:12 the practice of reading poetry, which too has built for me from these classes,
02:37:18 I learned a lot about, How to read poetry,
02:37:23 Um, even if it is.. very diverse in terms of how you might approach that.
02:37:33 But there are still some.. You know, underlying ways, some..
02:37:41 offering, some methodology, some curiosities that.. some ways of approaching it that might.
02:37:49 make it more accessible, even if it is someone. Um..
02:37:55 offering you some poems. That do actually connect to you, speak to you.
02:38:03 invite you into this magical. World of poetry, and I hope that.
02:38:12 Um, I can offer something that can serve as.. One of those invitations.
02:38:20 Um, and so that'll be the first part, and then the second part of the poetry
02:38:24 workshop, I'm hoping will be about, um..
02:38:32 It's, uh, the name I had in my head was 'Searching for a poem',
02:38:38 and that one will be more focused on.. Uh, creating a poem.
02:38:44 not necessarily from a blank page or from scratch that often puts us, uh, in this position of,
02:38:55 feeling as though, uh.. We are taking a giant leap, trying to make something out of nothing.
02:39:03 Um, and instead exploring ways of. Trying to look for the words and sources through,
02:39:14 Found, uh, materials, processes that I have.. Um, learned over time.
02:39:24 Coming to not a blank page, but, eh..
02:39:34 a collage-style approach to.. making poetry.
02:39:43 You know, taking.. taking some baby steps. Into.. into..
02:39:51 writing a poem, even if that sounds really.. scary, or intimidating, or..
02:39:58 could I even be good at that? Yes, you can. Yes, we can.
02:40:04 And.. I wanna try to put this together. Because, one, I've learned a lot, but..
02:40:13 I am learning a lot, too. Every day..
02:40:18 I, um.. not every day, but whenever I read a new poem by a new poet, or..
02:40:27 Uh, no poem by a poet that I'm already familiar with, it doesn't matter, I'm
02:40:35 learning something.. Fundamentally new, going through
02:40:39 this kind of process of.. Opening my eyes, opening my sensorium
02:40:54 my worldview, my experiences. Allowing, uh, the voice.
02:41:03 The voices that.. Poet, the poem is bringing into it.
02:41:11 To.. Bring me.. locate me, situate me.
02:41:18 Flood me, and feel me in.. the experience
02:41:25 of that poem. Seeing where it takes me, seeing..
02:41:32 What.. maybe.. Was intended, or even trying to guess at it.
02:41:40 But also, what actually happens for me.
02:41:48 What shifts for.. me from that..
02:41:53 And potentially what it might spark for me, what new connections it might spark for me.
02:42:01 I love poetry because,
02:42:08 it feels to me, not as a.. A genre.. genre.. genre? Genre? How do.. how do you say it? Genre of writing,
02:42:19 Um, because.. I don't particularly buy into this..
02:42:25 very, um.. Clean binary distinctions between any of the genres, like fiction, nonfiction, poetry, it can be whatever, but I see.
02:42:35 poetry, or being a poet,
02:42:42 ss.. um.. sn identity or an orientation,
02:42:49 in.. being an artist,
02:42:53 And that has to do with how you pay attention to the world, and how..
02:42:59 you create.. Um, A world,
02:43:06 and allow people to experience, that world through..
02:43:13 the poem that you chose. to birth. Or.. share. And..
02:43:28 I find that beautiful. I find that poetry.. lives in other artistic mediums that aren't writing.
02:43:39 And even coming into contact with modalities, like visual poetry, that really blur the lines between
02:43:49 Um, what we consider to be visual art, and what we consider to be the written or literary arts.
02:43:57 And visual poetry can exist in both realms. And I find that that's cool, so..
02:44:08 anyway, this is kind of what I'm working on. This two-part..
02:44:13 Um.. Poetry group experiments.
02:44:20 And.. yeah.., is this going to be something that..
02:44:25 I record maybe, uh, it's gonna be something that is.. Something I run live with..
02:44:34 a few folks that are interested. Maybe that can be something that can be recorded, that I might share after, if folks want to consume it
02:44:43 asynchronously, but.. I'm not sure yet. So, I'm putting it out here. Let's see what comes out of this, but this is what I'm scheming, this is what I'm working on.
02:44:58 and.. I wanted to keep you posted on that.
02:45:04 Lastly.. I..had this kind of.. beautiful moments earlier today, of..
02:45:22 Trying to use my.. phone camera against my binocular lenses, because my binoculars can be..
02:45:33 chained with the lens of the phone. And that can somehow allow you to take..
02:45:38 phone photographs through.. Basically, whatever the binocular is saying can be captured by the phone.
02:45:46 But I found, in the process of. Doing this, that it was actually really hard for me to ooh.
02:45:52 match those things up, because, um.. You know, I'm Disabled, like, my..
02:45:58 sense of coordination isn't really the best, maybe that's a part of it.
02:46:04 I was also, you know. Just my hands were hurting, so I wasn't able to hold a position very well.
02:46:11 The positions that I was able to set down, one or the other
02:46:16 on what isn't working, I didn't have a tripod. And.. I just kept trying and trying, and then at some point.
02:46:25 I thought, oh.. Well, maybe..
02:46:31 This is it, this is part of it, I should take the pictures that I can take.
02:46:37 And allow the art form to emerge from that, the art's form...
02:46:45 to emerge from that.
02:46:49 I could argue that it's its own art form, which is mostly just taking
02:46:56 quote-unquote bad pictures. But..
02:47:02 It was actually really fun, and.. I.. and it ended up being this..
02:47:11 I don't know, this cool photoshoot of sorts where I was just sitting,
02:47:17 by the water, you know, on so many pebbles, and just watching,
02:47:24 the water crash on the surface. It was so loud. And.. I think my partner actually recorded the sound of the water, and..
02:47:34 she was talking about.. the loud, crinkly.. wave sound that you could hear as the waves were crashing and receding against the pebbles close to the shore.
02:47:52 And I was just looking at it through the binoculars, but because I could never,
02:48:01 queue up the lenses right, I ended up with this.. beautiful set of photographs, or at least I think are beautiful,
02:48:12 that, you know, I'm.. hoping will continue to feed
02:48:18 into, um.. places I use photos, like title
02:48:25 images for posts I write to y'all, for which I've been using more and more of my photos of late.
02:48:34 Yeah, it's something.. that I have done from when I was a kid, but I don't have any photography training or experience, but..
02:48:43 I was always more comfortable behind the camera than I was in
02:48:48 front of it, so I would.. take pictures of others.
02:48:53 I can't say that I took good pictures. Even now, I don't take that good pictures of other people, but I do go around taking pictures of flowers, like,
02:49:04 just.. just whatever I'm interested in, whatever I'm observing. And.. slowly, I've picked up some tips and tricks.
02:49:15 Through people who actually study these things. Such as my partner.
02:49:21 Because some of the.. lens measurements, the numbers, the aperture, like, any of those words about how one takes photos, it breaks my brain a bit.
02:49:32 Even if I can understand the physics when you explain it to me,
02:49:36 as soon as.. I turn around, I'm completely lost on what just happened. So.. I..
02:49:49 you know, learn best through inference, and just by doing it,
02:49:54 mostly doing it wrong. Or quote-unquote wrong, and then figuring things out over time.
02:50:03 But as I have allowed myself to do that, I've learned
02:50:09 that.. it's its own form of storytelling. And..
02:50:17 sometimes.. learning to fuck it up,
02:50:21 can become the story. And..
02:50:28 be something that a perfect photograph of the ocean, can never be.
02:50:38 And.. that's what I am sitting with today.
02:50:44 The power of allowing, our own processes of,
02:50:50 learning and curiosity, observation..
02:50:57 and creative impulses. And allowing that to unfold..
02:51:05 allowing that to unfold. Knowing that..
02:51:09 the first few times, we'll just fail. we'll just suck at it.
02:51:17 or we think we suck at it. But.. in trying..
02:51:23 we.. see the voice,
02:51:27 we grow the voice, and something.. greater,
02:51:34 than we can ever imagine, comes out of it at some point,
02:51:40 someday, and then we look back, and everything makes sense.
02:51:47 That's.. what I'm sitting with this week.
02:52:00 How the artist life.. has so thoroughly changed me.
02:52:09 And I've been on this.. exciting brink of bringing what I have learned,
02:52:18 and what I am interested in continuing to learn along with,
02:52:24 my people, my communities, with you, here.
02:52:30 So, yeah, thanks for.. listening, and..
02:52:36 I.. will, you know, keep you posted on how these offerings evolve.
02:52:43 If you have any questions, any ideas, any.. interests, curiosities..
02:52:50 reach out to me, and.. I super appreciate it.
02:52:54 Alright, thanks folks. I hope you have a super good week ahead.
02:53:01 Happy New Moon, happy Cancer season. And talk to you soon!
02:53:08 Bye.