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 ==== Transiency Maja Kuzmanovic ====
-The core team of FoAM bxl, including [[maja_kuzmanovic|me]], started our [[http://fo.am/macrotransiency-foam-bxl/|macrotransiency]] with the new moon in February 2016, carving out time to [[http://fo.am/laying-fallow/|lay fallow]] and pursue things that “there isn’t time for”, to explore the unknown and embrace the unexpected.
+The core team of FoAM bxl, including [[maja_kuzmanovic|me]], started our [[http://fo.am/macrotransiency-foam-bxl/|macrotransiency]] with the new moon in February 2016. We carved out a year to [[http://fo.am/laying-fallow/|lay fallow]] and pursue things that “there isn’t time for”, to explore the unknown and embrace the unexpected.
+Visual impressions of the year can be found in my [[https://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/albums/72157672406688516|"transient" album]] and on [[https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/albums/72157666465040662|FoAM's flickr pages]], which also include photographs from my fellow transients [[transiency_rasa_alksnyte|Rasa Alksnyte]] and [[transiency_nik_gaffney|Nik Gaffney]] (from whom I borrowed some of the images on this page as well).
 This page is the informal log of my transiency process, in reverse chronological order.
+==== Echoes from my fallow year ====
+==== February 2017 ====
+=== Week 53 ===
+I wanted to end my fallow year up north, in the cold and dark of the long winter night. The Nordic penchant for darkness and intensity soothes my senses and sensibilities. So does the acceptance of the mysterious, otherworldly or magical. The "unknowable" is simply a part of everyday life. It’s suffused in the landscape, which gleams in the stark and unrelenting beauty of solitude.
+I wanted to be immersed in dim surroundings that would invoke one more deep dive of introspection. Once I submerged myself deep enough to find a place of raw honesty, I wanted to look over the insights I collected over the last year, to see what emerged as promising directions. Instead of darkness though, I encountered a continuously changing light. From the breathtakingly intense colours of dawn and twilight (each lasting about three hours), through the many hues of water, snow and ice, the wabi-sabi colours of the vegetation, to the luminous moonlight and the eerie northern lights. The darkness was fiercely luminous.
+{{::l1029578.jpg?500 |}}
+The crisp light in the north was not just awe inspiring but also completely 'absorbent'. I witnessed all of my carefully laid out plans dissolving into the landscape. Instead of deep contemplation, I experienced the most profound stillness. A state of absolute presence, an active passivity which is for me the epitome of being fallow. I spent hours gazing out of windows, viscerally experiencing timelessness of each moment. The thoughts and worries - which were still just as present - seemed to glide off me like water off a seal’s coat. After a few futile attempts at resistance (consisting of opening my computer and editing text), I surrendered and let go. I ended my fallow year by being utterly fallow.
+The last day the sky descended so low as to be indistinguishable from the sea, obliterating all colours into dark shades of grey. As the darkness grew, so I began turning inward. Many memories rose to the surface, with as many emotions in tow. I watched them play out, a syncopated movie in slow motion. The directionless flow punctuated by daily rituals, seasonal observances, intimate celebrations and subdued mournings. A melancholy sense of loss entwined with gratitude.
+I ended my pondering on the fallow year with the aftertaste of gratitude. To myself, to the core team of FoAM bxl and other foamies near and far, to our funders and clients, members and friends and to all of the mysterious forces of the universe for conspiring to make this year happen. It was far from perfect - and far from perfectly fallow - but it was necessary and it was valuable. I began the year rather depleted. I can’t say that I’m coming out of it completely refreshed and energised, but at least when I look forward I see more possibilities than obstacles.
+The fallow rhythm allowed me to crystallise insights that were dormant under the surface in the previous years of living with dis-ease on both medical and professional fronts. I’m going to leave them scattered across this page as shimmering crystals. In lieu of a summary, I’d like to end this entry with some of the questions that arose  in the past year, to guide me in the next phase of inquiry:
+  * How to thrive in uncertainty?
+  * When faced with uncertain or difficult situations, how to "stay with the trouble", rather than fight, flight or freeze? From a place of openness and awareness, how to discern and cultivate promising alternatives to the status quo?
+  * How to move from the politics of surviving to a culture of thriving?
+  * How to tackle "wicked problems" in a complex, turbulent world?
+  * How to consciously live in perpetual states of transition (as individuals, organisations, societies)?
+  * How to "weaponise" prototyping futures (e.g. as a tactic of resistance to a fear-mongering litany, among other things)?
+  * How to hold space for embodied learning of complex, systemic phenomena (e.g. the effects of climate change)?
+  * How to design experiences for immersion and absorption in the thick present and the long now?
+  * What kinds of experiences stimulate contemplation and celebration?
+  * What experiences encourage wonder and wandering?
+  * What (new) myths and belief systems could foster alternatives to the current culture of fear (including fear of impermanence and the "other")?
+  * How to translate animist or mystical attitudes towards interconnectedness of all life into worldviews compatible with techno-materialist societies?
+  * What kinds of relationships between human and non-human worlds could be cultivated in an era of mass-extinction? What parallel arts, sciences or technologies become possible if we widen the sentience spectrum?
+-> //On a more "meta level": Which of these questions are most relevant to explore? What would I/we need to be able to answer these questions? What does the next action research cycle look like? In which contexts, cultures and environments to explore these questions? Etc.//
+Warmed by the curious glow of possible answers, I’m taking my leave of the fallow year…
+<blockquote>
+To see a world in a grain of sand,\\
+And a heaven in a wild flower,\\
+Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,\\
+And eternity in an hour.\\
+-//[[http://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm|William Blake]]//
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32895023645/}}\\
+=== Week 52 ===
+I’m enveloped in darkness. The darkness of the pre-dawn hour while I write this entry. The darkness of early February, the in-between time of Imbolc and the inception of spring. The darkness of the fallow land and the fallow year, teeming with vigorous yet bitter energy of life below its surface. The darkness of a crumbling cocoon, too tight for the creature craving to emerge from within. "//Not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb//" ([[http://valariekaur.com/2016/11/a-sikh-prayer-for-america-on-november-9th-2016/|Valerie Kaur]]).
+{{::schiphol_bladerunner.jpg?730 |}}
+On Thursday morning, when the flight from Singapore landed in Amsterdam, the first announcement I heard was "//Watch your step when you get off the aircraft, there is a technical problem with lighting in parts of the airport.//" Under the watchful eyes of the grim security personnel, we descended into a dark corridor, pulsing with emergency strobe-lights. A river of flight-dazed passengers walking slowly in a disordered line, up a rickety escalator, people’s faces glowing eerily green. I felt as if we stumbled onto the set of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner|Blade Runner]]. Cyberpunk incarnated. The colour faded into bleak shades of greys and browns when we stepped off the train in Brussels…
+A stark contrast to the cheerful pinks, reds and oranges of the Chinese New Year that illuminated our last walk along Marina Bay only half a day earlier. The first days of the Year of the Rooster heralded interesting opportunities for the nomadic FoAM studio in Asia Pacific. We spent several tropical evenings in the company of [[https://twitter.com/honorharger|Honor Harger]] (and Co.), discussing times of transition and complexity, technological and social innovation, consciousness and religion, and a myriad of possible futures in Singapore as a temporary outpost for FoAM’s nomads.
+<blockquote>//We are curious about the changing relationships between human and non-human worlds, in what Whitehead calls “mysterious reality in the background, intrinsically unknowable". We’re particularly interested in exploring ecological connections between worldviews, including kami (shinto), viriditas (christian mysticism) and panpsychism (philosophy). Our focus is on creating experiences to convey or encourage a sense of wonder. Our media include Romantic Machines, the vegetal mind, meditative environments, rites of passage, human scale systems and non-human technologies...//
+- Excerpt from a letter Nik and I wrote in Singapore
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31907128593/}}\\
+This was a week of contrasts and crossroads. From 33 to 3 degrees Celsius. From a city that buzzes with seemingly effortless efficiency, to a city that seems to struggle with blockages of all kinds. From an optimistic sense of lightness and possibility to a sense of drowning in mud. From distilling insights for the future to unravelling the convoluted commitments of the past. From connectedness to separation, from offers to demands, from abundance to scarcity. From thriving to surviving.
+<blockquote>Brussels is a city for those who have patience, time and imagination. It is for those who question the increasingly frenetic pace of urban life and work. It is for those who appreciate understatement and refuse homogenising labels and manufactured “hip” concepts. Perhaps, however, what keeps Brussels attractive is its latent sense of expectancy, the promise of a perpetual becoming which is never fulfilled.
+- [[http://theartnewspaper.com/comment/comment/why-brussels-is-not-the-new-berlin/|Katerina Gregos]]
+</blockquote>
+I’m not going to dwell on my frustrations with circumstances in Brussels again. Suffice to say that I find the phase of re-integration quite difficult. The process of transition necessarily results in change - often manifest as finding a new role in an existing context, the transformation of the context itself, or a move to a completely new context. The only approach I haven’t yet tried with FoAM in Brussels is the latter. What I find difficult at the moment is that the direction and pace of my personal transition seems to be at odds with the place where I currently live and work. So much so that I don’t see any way back. It feels like I’ve outgrown the cocoon that has sustained me for years - if I don’t break out, I will suffocate and perish. I’ve seen this reaction with FoAM’s transients in the past. Our advice to them was almost always to stay close to where their renewed energies lie and to find ways to let go of the unsustainable ties to the past, no matter how painful the cutting of ties might be.
+During the past year I have glimpsed my preferred futures and experienced resonances with new places and people across the globe. Yet there are forces of friendship and commitment that keep pulling me back to Brussels and into old habits, behaviours and situations. It takes a lot of energy to resist, especially when paired with feelings of doubt, guilt and shame that I’m letting people down. It’s painful to cut ties to a place and a context, when there are people I care about who will remain. I don’t want burning bridges to light my way, I want to leap off the bridge into a bioluminescent sea…
+<blockquote>The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm (…). On the Offshore Lights you can live any story (…) and no one will say you're wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.
+- M L Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32597315871/}}\\
+==== January 2017 ====
+=== Week 51 ===
+The week began in Melbourne and ended in Singapore, with a social stop-over in Adelaide for a few days in between. Farewell to Australia and its motley collection of people and places, which increased my belief in the value of "strong opinions weakly held". My experience in the last month was one of stark contrasts and a few incongruities (beyond just the weather and the landscape). Farewell to my fellow hermits, cancer patients and mer-witches, to close family and remote acquaintances. To those precious people with whom I renewed and deepened bonds that defy geographic distances, and to those with whom I felt a creeping distancing of mindsets and lifestyles. Those who grew up, those who are still growing, and those who - like me - will probably never grow up.
+After a smooth flight on one of my favourite airlines, we arrived in our temporary "jaunty" studio in Bukit Batok, with only a few days before the end of the lunar year. The studio is in a peculiar building, our neighbours ranging from car mechanics to mysterious import/export dealerships. Further afield we’re surrounded with national parks, residential blocks and highways. I write overlooking a water-tower, three giant lightning-rods, a Buddhist-Taoist temple with amputated swastikas and a stray piece of jungle destined for development in the near future. The monotonous sound of ceiling fans and cicadas is occasionally interrupted by screeching tires and echoing gongs. It’s good to be back in Asia, with its convoluted entanglement of the past and the future, where impermanence and tradition co-exist in surprisingly congruous juxtapositions. So familiar, yet so appealingly "other" to me.
+{{::img_5433.jpg?500 |}}
+We are in Singapore for only a week, so we immediately settled into a comfortable routine. Waking up before dawn and going for walks ahead of the heat or rain. We discuss our insights from the fallow year, write and rest during the day, then roam the city after dark. It takes a while to get used to the tropical food and climate, so I’m quite tired and lethargic, with occasional and unpredictable bursts of energy. One of the best aspects of the fallow year is being able to follow my natural biorhythm more often. Obviously I feel better, less stressed and more capable when I can wake up without an alarm-clock, when I can rest if I feel tired and allow the rest to last as long as it takes - minutes, hours or even days. It must be possible to organise my post-fallow work in accordance with my physical needs. I know it makes me more effective and more resilient, but it takes quite some discipline to resist falling into the maelstroms of constant "business" when working with others. I believe that having a clearer direction and a set of principles could help. I’m planning to take time in the coming weeks to distill the insights from the last twelve months. I’d like to articulate a direction, together with a set of questions for the next phase.
+On the 27th of January was the New Year’s Eve in the Chinese lunar calendar. We cheered to it with a delicious mandarine-scented cocktail in the Tippling Club. Let the year of the Fire Rooster begin!
+//"Fire by its very nature is the element associated with brilliance, warmth, passion, spark. So a brilliant and enthusiastic rooster, combined with the salient characteristics of fire, heralds an enterprising and fruitful year, a year of results, achievements. This year we can fulfil all of our dreams."// ([[http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-new-year-2017-animal-year-fire-rooster-zodiac-sign-meaning-explained-2481889|Zhao Li]]).
+Well, the Fire Rooster couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Time to mark the beginning of the end of the fallow year…
+=== Week 49-50 ===
+Nik and I operated as a transient FoAM studio in Melbourne for a couple of weeks. We began by developing a sense of the city as a place to live and work - sourcing food, walking, taking public transport, frequenting places suggested by locals, meeting friends and family. We arranged to meet specific people who could help us find our way into (working in) Melbourne. Through a range of planned and spontaneous conversations with young and old (including a chance encounter with [[https://twitter.com/futuryst|Stuart Candy]] on a tram), we uncovered some of the opportunities, challenges and practicalities we would be faced with if we decided to work more extensively in Australia. The most promising directions for our work in Melbourne include connections between health/wellbeing, futures, entrepreneurship, research and experience design. Food futures resonated with most people we spoke with. While this might be an easy entry point, our work with inhabiting uncertainty might be most useful in the long run (considering the city’s environmental, economic, (multi)cultural and infrastructural issues). There were several conversations that lead to possible offers in academia, but I would prefer to work as FoAM on the edges of academia and other sectors. We left with a sense of possibility, a list potential collaborations, and an intention to return in about a year.
+Aside from paying attention to the world around us, I was conducting an experiment of my own: observing if and how my body can find a new balance after surgery, long distance travel (and it’s associated side-effects) and a few weeks of physically disruptive lifestyle (managed through medication and meditation). The basic requirement to be able to become a "drifter" in the transient/nomadic FoAM studio is that I must feel well enough to work wherever I am. In other words, I should feel at "home" physically and mentally. Based on my experience in the last six months, this can take 1~2 weeks, depending on my activities and surroundings. The time is substantially reduced if I can organise my own time and cook most meals at home. After I find a physical and mental balance, I can focus better on working with others and contributing within the local context. My current working hypothesis is that we could have 3-4 nomadic bases per year, with occasional shorter travels in between (if needed). I’d like to keep one of the bases in Brussels, at least for 2017. I know I’d like to spend longer periods in Croatia, and that I’d like to give Melbourne a try. For the rest, I remain open to different possibilities, and observe where I feel a strong resonance (like Japan).
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32092510410/}}\\
+<blockquote>We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals."
+—  McKenzie Wark </blockquote>
+Operating as a FoAM studio in Melbourne included not only the aforementioned experiments, but also collaborating with people on site and remotely. We wrote two articles, facilitated two personal scenario workshops (promising line of work, though economically unsustainable in its current form), co-ordinated upcoming events in Europe and maintained bits of remote admin and logistics for FoAM bxl.
+{{ ::fallowish.jpg?400|}} The first article we worked on (with Time’s Up) was a short piece about our work with [[://future_fabulators/making_things_physical|physical narratives]] for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Futures_Studies|Journal of Futures Studies]]. The reviewers had requested that the article should situate our work more explicitly within Futures (the academic discipline), while conforming to the format of the journal. The process reminded me of the rather insular and self-referential nature of contemporary academia, where transdisciplinary theory (or rhetoric) and practice rarely overlap. It also reminded me of one of the main reasons we started FoAM: to have an independent entity that can work WITH institutions (such as universities), rather than each of us being individually employed by them. Seventeen years later, I think this position is perhaps even more relevant than when we started.
+Working as an independent, but well connected transdisciplinary network we can function as a bridge across oft disparate worlds of theory and practice. We can only do that if we exist in the (often lonely and unrecognised) spaces in between. This is nothing new for us, but perhaps we should more clearly (and vocally) articulate this position. Not only is the way we work across various divides beneficial for the people in FoAM, but some aspects of it can be useful for others. Our work with [[:marine_colab/start|Marine CoLABoration]] for example, where we translated our collaborative processes into a programme of workshops for a range of organisations working on marine conservation. While our direct involvement in the programme ended about a year ago, the [[https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/about-us/story/|CGF]] invited us to write a reflective article about it. We spent several days unravelling FoAM’s interpretation of the "lab approach", using Marine CoLAB as our case study. We wrote the first draft of the article, to be finalised in February.
+Every morning we had a discussion over breakfast to asses our progress, which usually lead to putting the fallow year on hold to meet external deadlines. Combining the transiency with several overlapping experiments, doing work for clients and worrying about various loose ends in Brussels caused tension at times. All of us in the core team felt frustrated and desperate at various points in this fallow-ish year. Even though our reasons and circumstances varied, all the difficulties seem to originate from not having set clear boundaries around our transiency and making inevitable compromises. As the year draws to its end, a paradoxical sense of urgency to hold the space for reflection is increasing. At the same time I feel as if I’m crouching on starting blocks, my (mental) muscles tensing for a sprint. I must be watchful and pace myself as I begin the re-integration phase. I have to keep reminding myself that the next phase is going to be more like a long hike on uneven terrain than a short run with clearly delineated start and finish lines…
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/32777600261/}}\\
+=== Week 48 ===
+In the first hours of 2017 I glimpsed [[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/video/2017/jan/12/australia-day-lamb-ad-tackles-indigenous-land-rights-and-immigration-video|Australia]] as I had previously imagined it, before I ever set foot across its quarantined border. A group of people - likely a conglomeration of several beach parties - had invented or spontaneously organised a game loosely based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoits|quoits]] which involved covering a tree with looped glow-sticks. The tree was quite tall and the people in varying stages of drunkenness, so few of the glowing loops would reach their target. Successful throws received gaudy cheers, the ones that failed were jovially encouraged to try again. The tree was silently glowing in fading rainbow colours, surrounded by convivial echoes of laughter and multilingual conversations. The very air suffused with the ease of communal wellbeing and a relaxed, non-competitive playfulness. Diversity, social inclusion, non-judgmental collaboration, all qualities that the EU is explicitly aspiring to were playing out in front of me, on the other side of the globe. I knew it wouldn’t last, which only made this fleeting sensation of kinship with total strangers even more precious.
+{{ :vv-fest.jpg |}}
+Kinship, kinfolk, kindred spirits, kith and kin have been a leitmotif of my first week in 2017. The first couple of days I luxuriated in the verdant garden of the Blue House, in the company of [[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/an-oral-history-of-the-first-cyberfeminists-vns-matrix|Franscesca Da Rimini]] (GashGirl, doll yoko, liquid_nation, VNS Matrix...) and [[https://medium.com/@alkan|Alkan Chipperfield]], two of my favourite Aussies, both who I would consider kin. The remainder of the week I spent in Melbourne in the company of my extended family in-law, other kin, celebrating the "Vv Festival", which included several birthday parties, cocktails, pub-food, fine dining and backyard barbecues.
+In between the festivities I was happy to begin exploring Melbourne as a potential nomadic dwelling. A warm midnight walk along the Yarra river and the [[https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/|botanic gardens]], together with the abundance of the [[http://southmelbournemarket.com.au/|South Melbourne market]] seem to hold a lot of promise… I’ve been skeptical of the infamous hipster foodie culture, but I’m beginning to experience some its virtues - I can get [[http://www.fodmapped.com/|fodmapped]] foods in corner stores, and no one rolls their eyes when I list my various food intolerances (side effects of chemotherapy). I laughed at myself while ordering a "decaf short mac" or an "iced matcha latte" and I can’t help but admit that - as someone who gets heart palpitations from coffee but likes fluffy drinks - I truly enjoyed the experience (of the drinks not the terminology). Beyond sophisticated food and drinks, I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the local geography and culture next week, when most of the family departs to other cities and continents.
+In the rare pauses between being with family, I’ve often caught myself pondering FoAM as a kinship network, a "clanarchy" of sorts. I’ve heard most foamies (and some of their blood-relatives) describe themselves as part of the "FoAM family". Even if we don’t work together for years, there often remains a sense of belonging, which doesn’t seem to fade. When we meet new people, there are some who 'feel' like long lost relatives, while others don’t. In some subtle ways we’re akin (pun intended) whether or not we work together. Sometimes collaboration can get in the way of kinship, sometimes it enhances it…
+I’m curious to explore how (and if) the FoAM network could function as a kinship network. In a way we already do. However, it’s not clear to me what would be required to maintain such a network when it isn’t bound by "work", but rather by likemindedness and care for each other. It might make sense to explore and experiment with diverse forms of kinship which could enrich and expand the FoAM network. I can’t yet clearly articulate what this would entail, but I think it’s something worth contemplating.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/32070393112/}}\\
+==== December 2016 ====
+=== Week 47 ===
+{{::img_5072.jpg?400 |}}It’s been a while since I was involved in a full-blown family Christmas celebration. This year in Glenelg I was fully immersed, albeit occasionally distracted by jetlag, motion sickness, heart palpitations and painful lymphedema. My body felt like a marionette, wobbling on the strings of willpower, circling around breakfasts, lunches and dinners with extended family and family friends. Food and cooking (and cleaning) for days on end. Mountains of gifts, mountains of waste. Balancing on the fine line between generosity and (over)consumption. With my socialist understanding of the spirit of the holiday, I put myself in service and helped where I was needed, which sometimes included simply getting out of the way. It reminded me of birthdays in the Kuzmanovic clan, which often numbered over thirty or forty people. Navigating such occasions is strangely similar to the state of mind I associate with being in the flow on my own. The sense of self dissolves into a state of alert attention. I felt like a leaf carried along the strong currents of a turbulent river. If I resist it in any way, it could become unbearable, but if I just let things happen, boisterous storms passed over me and through me… A good practice in how to avoid feeling "peopled out". From sunrise to sunset, the house was echoing with running feet of the young and old, a crying baby, children’s high pitched, high decibel voices and rapid fire of simultaneous conversations in a myriad of Aussie accents. When I’d return from a sunset walk along the beach, the soundtrack changed to all-night doof-doof of bad music and drunken destruction inflicted by our neighbours.
+As the temperature cooled from 41.5C to 19C, facilitated by a storm of monsoon proportions, the family commitments thinned out and we could venture further afield, meet friends and collaborators (including Tim Boykett, Sarah Neville, Matt Thomas and Pippa Buchanan) in a pleasant mix of socialising and work-talk. Aside from  reminiscing on times gone by, resonating themes included trans-local communities, futures and transitions, various approaches to collapse, uncertainty and adaptation, life-writing and body-writing. Our [[Doing nothing]] is still intriguing to most, especially on organisational scale.
+New Year’s Eve began for me with writing in the garden, basking in the warm glow of the last hour of sunlight in 2016. After a solid roast, Nik and I walked into the sunset and into the new year (most of the time against the current of crowds). It’s an important transition point for the two of us. The end of FoAM’s decade as a structurally funded "kunstenwerkplaats" (arts-lab). We still have some funding and legal obligations to fulfil in 2017, but the bulk of the work and responsibility was carried off our shoulders by the wind blowing from the Southern Ocean.
+We walked along the edge of the water for hours, fuelled by whisky and smoked almonds. In the distance, the horizon a deep black expanse extending into infinity. Closer to the shore, the water lightened to a myriad of greys, continuously churned by the rolling waves and fast moving clouds. Above it all hung the southern sky, with its (for me) unfamiliar constellations… Around us the darkness was broken by fire twirlers, salt lamps, flash lights and the comical dances of disembodied glow-sticks, attached to limbs, necks and heads of humans, dogs and trees. The atmosphere was convivial and festive, yet hushed by the rumble of the ocean and the wind. We were surrounded by people, all moving but going nowhere in particular.
+I wanted to meet the new year walking. We passed solitary meditators, intimate couples and small beach parties. The fireworks shot up, people stopped and cheered. we kept walking. Invoking our new year’s resolution to leave the burdens of the past behind and move forward, together, into whatever the new year may bring...
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31177510074/}}\\
+=== Week 46 ===
+A week of travel and transit, from from the northern to southern hemisphere, from winter to summer, from work life to family life, from the stillness of our Brussels apartment to the syncopated fluttering of the Blue House in Glenelg. In between Nik and I found ourselves celebrating 'winter' solstice in Singapore, one degree north of the equator, where duration of day and night remain nearly constant throughout the year. When the sun began returning to the northern hemisphere, at 6:44PM (local time) we were eating an Omakase (お任せ) dinner. Omakase, "I’ll leave it up to you". In one word, it intertwines trust, artistry, skill, spontaneity, grace, hospitality, lightness, deliciousness, flow and letting things be just as they are. Every sip and each bite was an invocation of these qualities. May they guide us as we begin to transition from inner journeys of the fallow year to the year of outward-oriented experimentation.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31208115763/}}\\
+=== Week 45 ===
+I was hoping that the weeks before winter solstice would be truly fallow so I could enjoy the mysterious chill and darkness of the season, unfortunately this was not the case. Timeless, careless absorption in the present - one of the key aspects of the fallow year - emerged occasionally while walking along misty streets illuminated by Yuletide fairy lights.
+Yet another pause in the fallow year (where pause means a flurry of fast-paced context-switching activity). A compromise. Meetings, conference calls, design sessions, accounting and administration. [[http://fo.am/tasting-fieldwork/|Promotion]] and [[http://lib.fo.am/hosting/december_2016|documentation]]. Scheduling. Work-related travel, with one Eurostar journey which lasted over eight hours (instead of two), due to suspected stowaways on the roof of the train and the convoluted incompatibilities between high-speed and regular train lines in Belgium. My final post-op checkup of 2016. A series of rushed farewells. Perseverance keeping emotional swings in check. From tension to hope, frustration to affection.
+The week began with Rasa, Nik and I finally deciding to let go of our beautiful, yet entropic studio space, likely sometime in the spring of 2017 (legalities and details TBC). The week ended with the bittersweet aftertaste of our last FoAM apero as a "kunstenwerkplaats". I spent most of my time wrapping up past commitments and consolidating plans for the near future.
+The post-fallow stage of my transiency - the re-integration - has begun gradually filling with a series of experiments. From March to July 2017 my calendar includes bursts of collaborative activities (workshops, events, design sessions) interspersed with longer periods of solitary work, in Belgium and abroad. It looks like a comfortable rhythm, but doesn’t have much space for adding anything unplanned, ad-hoc or serendipitous collaborations. Instead, the first half of the year is about re-affirmation of existing working relationships, which Nik and I would like to continue in our new guise of a transient FoAM studio. For the rest of the year, I’d like to keep enough (head)space and balance between vision and adaptation to respond in interesting ways to whatever might emerge.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31135597824/}}\\
+=== Week 43-44 ===
+My time in the last couple of weeks has been mostly future oriented, occasionally slipping into the troublesome past (with my convoluted invalidity status) and subsiding in the melancholic present (with unpredictable energy levels, and several endings to mourn and celebrate). The very near future - the last couple of months of the fallow year - required finalising travel plans to Australia, Singapore and Norway. After that, in the early spring of 2017 we will be entering a "non-fallow" phase of the transiency. I’ve decided that my transiency will continue in 2017, considering the many interruptions during 2016. I still feel the need for reflection, strategising and writing (in particular my cancer memoir and the [[http://lib.fo.am/f15/grow_your_own_worlds|GYOW]] kaiseki articles, which I will not manage to finish this year). Also, Nik and I would like to explore what it would be like for the two of us to function as a transient FoAM studio - drifting, popping in-and-out of existence where needed. Without a physical HQ. We need to research and experiment with "how" this nomadic studio could function and support itself. Although the "real" work will begin from March 2017, our collaborators are starting to need our input now. To ensure that our "new" commitments remain in line with promising directions, we conducted a futuring exercise looking at longer time horizons and possible alternatives.
+{{ ::img_4930.jpg?500|}}
+We asked ourselves "What things that we resonate with should we commit to?" Over the course of this year we touched on this question in informal conversations, but this time we attempted to find possible answers with a structured 2x2 scenario exercise. From a forest of signals and change drivers, we ended up with four critical uncertainties and distilled two scenario axes: capitalism <-> post-capitalism and materialist anthropocentrism <-> ecological panpsychism. The scenarios helped us clarify which aspects of our work might be most relevant in the world today and in the possible futures which we can see emerging. While there were no surprises, the exercise helped us connect and distill some of our intuitive resonances to larger societal trends. We came up with a few speculative directions:
+If we live in a world where climate chaos is tackled through materialist anthropocentrism in a capitalist society we might want to play the long game. We could spin-off Certainty Ltd. weaponising our work as tactical consultants for climate futures, crypto-currencies, uncertainty and antifragility. FoAM itself could exist as a refuge and an alternative without attempting to change, communicate or contribute, but simply to live and let live. An ark of sorts, where things can still be otherwise, on a small scale, ideologically isolated from most of the rest of the world.
+If the world we live in has embraced a philantrocapitalist deep ecology, FoAM (as a Thalient Design Consultancy) could research and design holistic entanglements with non-humans as aesthetic and experiential services. We could provide situations and technologies for inter-species interaction and panpsychic dialogue.
+In an anthropocentric post-capitalist society, FoAM (aka Facilitators of Aberrant Mysticism) would thrive in prototyping unholy alliances, mediating, facilitating and introducing weirdness to question dogmas and data alike. Our work with transiencies and transitions, as well as ritual observances could be fulfilling a dire need in this society. We could be recognised (with official status) as a distributed pagan post-theist cult/guild for education and growing worlds.
+In a world of post-capitalist ecological panpsychism, a FoAM commons could grow into a trans-local kinship network, including human and non-human entities, individuals and collectives. It would describe itself both in terms of doing and being (together). A fluid entity, with ever changing activities and members, governed by shared organisational principles. Years of experience with emergent governance structures would allow us to become mentors and advisers for other commons. Our work would be diverse, recognisable as "FoAM" in its widening of the sentience spectrum - whether as transdisciplinary research, immersive experiences/art-worlds, species-connecting technologies or sentience widening retreats.
+<blockquote>The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future, of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures for coming generations. Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings." - Donna Haraway </blockquote>
+==== November 2016 ====
+=== Week 41-42 ===
+I had my fourth reconstructive surgery on the 16th of November. The following weeks passed in convalescent limbo, coloured by a persistent sense of displacement and un-belonging. I exist in a parallel dimension, just a few oblique seconds away from consensus reality. The vertiginous dissolution began with a general anaesthetic seeping through my forearm, the distance to physical existence increasing, with giddiness and weightlessness as pleasant side-effects. My "self" gradually evaporated beyond the edges of my body out into the world which itself then vanished into thick darkness.
+I woke up a few hours later shivering in the ICU. I was wrapped in a "portable sauna", with nurses doing their best to raise my temperature above 34C. They asked me to grade my pain on a scale from 1-10. I know by now which numbers correspond to sufficient amounts of pain killers. It took me a while to answer, my sludgy brain having difficulty with languages. I watched my tongue move between "sedam" and "seven" until it finally settled on the Dutch "zeven". After a few minutes the comforting wave of ContraMal spread slowly through my veins. A sense of liquefying peace. The physical boundaries of my body began shifting, as the morphine commenced its merry dance. I was a spectator in an augmented reality performance. The physical sensations in my skin, organs, limbs, nerves and neurons were superimposed with a speculative map of my subtle body, flickering in and out of focus. Time and space stretching and compressing with a hint of nausea.
+{{:l1028458-2.jpg?500 |}}
+The surgery was successful and I was discharged in the evening. My convalescence proceeded without major complications. I remain wrapped in bandages and compression garments until mid December, but the pain and physical discomfort have been much more bearable this time around. The weakness and fatigue are still present, as usual. I’m expecting to be back to "normal" in a few weeks. We’re all hoping that I have entered the last stage of breast reconstruction, with no more major surgeries on my horizon.
+I spent my first week of recovery in a pleasant obligation-free abandon. My comfortable mental state was assisted by the appropriate medication, ferally traded in exchange for facilitating a "personal scenario building" session. I spent most of my time staring at the last autumn leaves fluttering to the ground, listening to audiobooks and watching period dramas. Visits from friends, skype conversations with remote family members and slow walks in the park provided occasional moments of congealing back into the here and now.
+When I was well enough to stop the medication I began to feel restless. A sense of dislocation from the world, its affairs and inhabitants which I had experienced as pleasant in the first week now felt like a nagging itch. I had a feeling that I was wasting precious time and becoming more irrelevant with each passing day. Forgotten. Out-of-touch. Out-of-place. Out of sight and out of heart. It didn’t help that one of the first impositions from the 'outside' was that of faceless bureaucracy. I spent days lost in Kafkaesque labyrinths between the Belgian tax system, social security and health insurance. It drove me to blubbering despair, episodes of escapism and agreeing with Virginia Woolf that "//The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.//"
+The best antidote to such mind-states has proven (again) to be meditation and simple daily rituals. With meditation (tonglen in particular) I could delve into my despair and observe that it isn’t specifically "mine", but an inevitable side-effect of being human. We all occasionally experience fear of failure, separation and disconnection, on a personal scale and as societies. Both meditation and daily rituals (such as morning practice or afternoon tea) help me find an anchor in the present - in the energising movements, scents, sights and sounds that make me so grateful for being alive.
+<blockquote>“… just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.” - Diana Gabaldon </blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/31197803985/}}\\
+=== Week 40 ===
+Back on the road, this time to London and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to help design an event with them. Most of the preparation needs to happen before the end of our sabbatical, but it’s a concession we decided to make due to our excellent collaboration in the previous years. Nik and I spent a few days preparing, hosting, then summarising the first design meeting. Enjoyable work.
+The morning of the meeting we woke up before 5AM, still somewhat jetlagged. Our hotel room had a mind of its own. Lights, heating, cooling and an errant TV turned themselves on and off randomly. At some point in the early morning the TV came alive and greeted us with the headline "Tears for Clinton, cheers for Trump." Well. Good morning! I wasn’t surprised. Still, a sense of resignation to 'interesting times' drifted into the room. Someone tweeted: "Octavia Butler was right." The USA finds itself on a slippery slope towards Earthseed.
+<blockquote>
+Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.
+(…)
+God is Change. \\
+-Earthseed. The Books of the Living.
+(…)
+- These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them. \\
+- But, Dad, that’s like… like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.
+- Octavia E. Butler
+</blockquote>
+The US election strongly tinted the moods and conversations of the Londoners we came across. A cold, grey and rainy day, perfectly matched the doom-mongering that spread across newspapers, cafes, tube stations and offices like a bad smell. It took quite some hosting alchemy to get the design meeting going, but we had done what was needed and have good material to work with.
+In this strange atmosphere (which felt like the eerie quiet before a forecast storm), we arrived at St Pancras station with a couple of hours to spare before our train departed to Brussels. Over some darjeeling and apple brandy, we mused that we might it be time to start "Certainty Ltd.", FoAM’s uncertainty consultancy. Fear in the face of uncertainty can lead to absurd situations. I had flashbacks to the time just before the Balkan wars. We didn’t believe that could happen either. But it did. And so did Trump. And climate chaos. And the GFC. And the refugee crisis. And many other things that might have been avoided if uncertainty wasn’t such a taboo. If this isn’t a strong signal pointing to where we should focus our energy, I don’t know what is.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30473477362/}}\\
+I can see the need for something like an "Inhabiting Uncertainty Training" wherever I go, but especially in Europe at the moment. Europe seems particularly fragile to me. Most Europeans have lived in relative comfort for decades and tend to take "certainty" and "security" for granted. Few now remember the horrors of world wars, others were born so removed from mass conflict that they can’t even imagine what it’s like. Consequently mistakes of the past begin repeating and rhyming. Populism. Xenophobia. Conservatism. It may look bleak yet there is still much that can be changed for the better. The old [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGIFublvDes|Clash]] refrain kept looping in my head… //"Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble and if I stay there will be double…"// Should I stay in Europe at this quite bleak time in its history?
+When Yugoslavia was falling apart, it looked like there was no way of putting it back together. The forces of fragmentation and destruction were unstoppable. The country - and with it my national identity - dissolved. Yet I still felt like I belonged on this continent. I felt European, more than anything else. I remember the graffiti I read on a wall somewhere at the end of the 90s, as the Euro-zone was being introduced: "//Europe could be my fatherland. Europe doesn’t exist.//" In all its elusiveness and vagueness, it holds a promise of alliances and collaboration, of celebrating difference and cultural experimentation. It seemed a perfect (non)place to spawn FoAM - an entity that’s all about dissolving borders and extending edges. In recent years though, it seems like the forces of fragmentation are rearing their ugly heads in Europe again. It’s not as far gone as Yugoslavia though, there is still hope. Which brings me back to my big question - "should I stay or should I go"?
+Last month I felt more at home in Japan than I have in Belgium in the last few years, or in Croatia since its inception. I don’t care much about the concept of identity - national or otherwise. I don’t feel an allegiance to any nation, region or belief system. I belong on Earth and often feel more connected to the rocks, plants and air than to human societies.  My human 'clan' is a loose knit network of people scattered across the globe, people unafraid to "grow their own worlds." I don’t belong anywhere in particular and at the same time I can feel at home everywhere. I can’t believe that in the 21st century this kind of thinking could get me into trouble - Cf. Theresa May’s infamous [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/05/theresa-may-criticized-the-term-citizen-of-the-world-but-half-the-world-identifies-that-way/|statement]] "//Today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street. But if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what citizenship means.//"
+Well then, I am a citizen of nowhere. So now what? While I felt welcome in Belgium and Europe, I was happy to contribute to and to benefit from the fantastic systems of cultural funding and humane healthcare. But I don’t feel as welcome here any more. The question remains, is it time to fight or time to leave? Or as The Clash sang, "//Should I cool or should I blow?//" Whether we stay or leave, what would be the most appropriate tactics and strategies in these times? Or as Changeist asked us - "how do you weaponise your work"? Should I fully focus on devising contemporary NNNI disaster drills? Become an uncertainty consultant? A post-antibiotic combat herbalist? Organise the underground of Unholy Alliances? Extreme transiencies anyone? Or is "nothing" the most radical thing I can do after all? A militant act of unnoticed disappearance.
+From a private message:
+<blockquote>
+M: If you ever need me, you know where to find me. \\
+K: Yes. No man’s land.
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30137433364/}}\\
+It’s the 11th of November today. Remembrance day. In London I saw many people wearing poppies on their collars in memory of WWI. I wonder how many of those people agree with Theresa May’s creed. Have they forgotten or do they refuse to see the parallels? Does their present seem so unique and their actions so much more evolved and insightful? Do they think no one tried similar thing before (and failed)? Similar questions arose from being back at the FoAM studio. Repeating patterns and energetic blockages. The pain of indecision, loss and detachment. Not wanting to hurt the people I care about, but also not wanting to deny the reality of my own unfulfilled needs. Yet my mere presence may make the hurt inevitable. I felt something in me die, sinking in the magma of collective [[https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Ll3TaVmIfk|amnesia]]. Whatever it was, may it rest in peace through the winter months, to become a fertile compost for something fresh and wondrous next spring…
+=== Week 39 ===
+Our flight from Tokyo landed in a very quiet Brussels on All Saints Day. I was happy to be home, even if the train smelled of cat piss and the information design was still as deliberately contradictory. The trees haven’t lost all their leaves yet, and there are lovely little shops and restaurants opening in the neighbourhood. Our apartment was warm thanks to the remote activation of the thermostat and the indoor plants welcomed us by still being green and alive. A few days later I had my six-monthly medical check-up at UZ Brussel, which resulted in an "all clear, though with slightly elevated tumour markers". Another good news was that thanks to the "find my iPhone" app and the kindness of several lovely Japanese people, my device and its data are currently in transit from Tohoku back to Brussels. Amazing. Arigato gozaimashita.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30652659042/}}\\
+I can conclude that my travel experiment worked, to a degree. I know now that I can manage long haul flights and train travel with sufficient buffering of "doing nothing" on both ends. However, working while travelling (which includes intense long days and eating out) is tricky, as is staying in hotels where I can’t cook for myself. I was on various medications more or less continuously for three weeks. This may be manageable for short periods, but I couldn't resume my old lifestyle of travelling and working in different countries a few days at a time. I imagine that longer stays, several weeks for example, in one place with our own kitchen would be much more manageable. We’ll continue this experiment in Melbourne in January.
+Our [[https://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/albums/72157672486522264|trip to Japan]] made it clear that it's time for Nik and me to leave Belgium (perhaps even Europe). It probably won’t happen tomorrow, next week or next month, but we shouldn’t wait too long. Spending a few weeks in a culture that I find energising and resonant, I was reminded that there are other parts of the world in which our contribution could be more appreciated. I don’t know if Japan will be our next destination. Iceland was another place which emerged in conversations. Or perhaps it will be Singapore or Melbourne or Pula or Berlin or London or Thimpu or Timbuktu or all, some or none of the above. The important thing for me now is to more consciously and deliberately loosen my bonds to Belgium to allow space for other possibilities to emerge. This includes having more concrete discussions about the future of FoAM’s Brussels studio without Nik and me at its core…
+==== October 2016 ====
+=== Week 38 ===
+My appreciation for Tokyo, Japan and its people continued growing the longer we spent there. Our pace slowed down after the Summit and the Forum, allowing me not only to reduce the amount of medication needed to function, but also to take time to enjoy my surroundings, including exhibitions like [[https://www.lensculture.com/daisuke-yokota|Daisuke Yokota]]’s Matter and the grand [[http://www.mori.art.museum/english/contents/universe_art/index.html|The Universe and Art]]. We wandered through Roppongi, Shinjuku and Harajuku, ate delicious food and even visited Fukuro no mise, the Owl Cafe.
+Most importantly, we spent time with friends. We were honoured to share home-cooked meals with Maki Ueda and Kohei Nishiyama’s family, and afternoon tea in a post WWII [[http://www.ginza-west.co.jp/english/|cafe]] with James Kondo. Old connections were quickly rekindled, with hopes, wishes and suggestions for more shared time together expressed on all sides.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30434840922/}}\\
+The coming four years may well be a good period for us to spend more time in Japan. There seem to be opportunities opening up in preparation for the Olympics, an openness in the creative sector and elsewhere. Working in academia (particularly art schools) combining teaching and research was an oft mentioned option (it seems important to have institutional backing to help with relocation, immigration and reputation building). Another approach could be to start a PhD or a fellowship at a university in Europe or Australia, with extensive fieldwork in Japan. We’d like to explore ways for FoAM to partner with academia on joint research projects with 'real world' and practice-based outcomes in Japan and Asia. Topics of current interest are future preparedness/inhabiting uncertainty, robotics, food, climate change and green energy, experiential learning and experience design, experimental rituals, disaster and death, etc.
+Our artistic work is appreciated and there seems to be a lot of interest in my memoir, but at the moment we probably couldn’t rely on income from such activities to afford living in Tokyo. Maki was suggesting possibilities on Ishigaki where living costs are much lower and there is an interest in having more foreigners involved in the local cultural scene. However, Ishigaki island is quite remote which would make our connection to other FoAM studios and working in other parts of the world rather difficult.
+We left Tokyo keeping various conversations open, hoping to restart them once we have more concrete plans for the next phase. With all the information and bustle of the city still buzzing in the back of my head, we arrived in the foothills of Japanese Alps. I spent the afternoon breathing in mountain air and staring at autumn foliage. I felt profoundly at peace. Before my sense of self completely dissolved in the landscape, I had a glimpse of what I’d like to work on. Translating it into words will necessarily fall short of the impression, but I’ll try anyway;
+//I’m interested in the intertwining of environmental and spiritual/philosophical dimensions of embodied experience of uncertainty. How do spiritual/mental models influence our relationships with the environment, including non-human entities like plants, animals and landscapes, as well as technological systems? I’m curious to compare how the world (and our place in it) is understood with concepts such as kami (shinto), viriditas (christian mysticism) and panpsychism (western philosophy). From historical, contemporary and futures perspectives (hindsight, insight, foresight). This research could inform more speculative/artistic aspects of the work including experience design (rituals, celebrations, contemplations, peak experiences, daily practices). Experiences that can convey or encourage the sense of wonder, which could in turn influence values, mental and behavioural changes in relation to environmental turbulence specifically and to impermanence and uncertainty in general.//
+I don’t think I can phrase this more concretely at the moment, but it should be enough to remind me of the 'glimpse' in the coming months.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/30825945202/}}\\
+During our last days in Japan we let go of possible futures to become immersed in our present experience. It was just past peak [[http://www.japan-guide.com/blog/koyo16/|koyo]] time in the Japanese Alps of the Nagano region. We spent a few cool autumn days exploring the Nojiriko lake and Myoko-kogen region, from a strange hotel straight from a Murakami story. The strangeness of our experience was enhanced by losing my phone, and blindly navigating the rural wilderness by deciphering low-res wooden maps and hunting for cryptic signs for forest trails and learning to recognise kanji characters [[http://www.mustlovejapan.com/subject/naena_falls/|苗名滝]].
+<blockquote>What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. -Haruki Murakami</blockquote>
+When we left the Nojiriko lake, I was in a state of complete confusion (amplified by the side-effects of medication) with an ever decreasing confidence in my ability to understand my place the world, let alone function in or contribute to it in any meaningful way. A state of utter liminality. Humbling and disorienting when attempting to make sense of it, but strangely pliant when I’d allow myself to go with the flow (which included not loosing track of Nik, whose head was luckily sticking far enough above the sea of other passengers).
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30133918293/}}\\
+In this state we arrived back in Tokyo. It was late afternoon when we emerged above ground in bustling Shibuya, a stark contrast to the forlorn places of the Tohoku countryside. It was All Hallows Eve, which meant an even higher concentration of the usual cosplay characters, gothic lolitas and other [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawaii|kawaii]] in Harajuku and Ura Hara. We joined the flow of motley humanity oozing through the tiny streets, temporarily escaping into a park and a tiny restaurant for our last soba dinner.
+At the end of the afternoon we boarded a packed rush-hour train, where the halloween party-goers with vampire teeth and boiling flesh (some wearing 'real’ cold-masks) merged with uniformed school girls and black-suited commuters. The blurring of fiction and reality continued. It was a perfect closing of our stay in Japan. We ended the evening in another chapter from a Murakami novel, the sky lounge of an airport hotel, listening to the bar’s eerie soundtrack and watching a stream of planes land in the pouring rain. We sipped tea and whisky, while I conspicuously "disappeared" a spoon under the watchful eye of a polite yet very stern waiter.
+<blockquote>
+“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn’t fear boundaries, but you also should not be afraid of destroying them. That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. What’s really important in life is always the things that are secondary." -Haruki Murakami
+</blockquote>
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30732591316/}}\\
+=== Week 37 ===
+Our second week in Japan provided stark contrast to the first. We moved to Tokyo and spent most of the week with nearly 600 Young (and not-so-young) Global Leaders at the YGL summit, followed by the [[http://wfsc2016.mext.go.jp/en/|World Forum on Sport and Culture]]. The latter was organised by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. I saw this week as an opportunity for horizon scanning, a moment to begin extending our feelers towards the future of our work at FoAM, as well as a chance to re/establish contacts in Japan, Asia and beyond. It was an intense experience on many levels.
+With participants including political and business leaders from ~70 countries and session titles such as 'The Future of Humanity','The Big Ideas' and 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution', the YGL summit raised expectations. "We stand for generosity, authenticity, respect and impact. This is a space for sharing and action!" For the most part, it was an event designed for overcommitted extroverts, aiming to strengthen a sense of belonging to a community and a feeling that its participants can change the world together. Needless to say, for a couple of (gnostic) introverts and transdisciplinary wanderers like Nik and me, being immersed in such a crowd can be inspiring but also quite exhausting.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30434786172/}}\\
+Even though "future" became a buzzword for the event, there were no surprising new insights for us, just slowly moving waves. It was amusing to observe how things like futures, systems thinking or resilience have gradually seeped into the WEF jargon, while I still remember getting blank stares of incomprehension when talking about such things a decade ago. Yet for all the talk of futures, it was also interesting to notice how difficult it seems for many people to speculate and extrapolate. Many prefer to remain in the comfort zone of generalisations, platitudes or opinionated statements about the past and present. "Uncertainty and crisis need collaboration and dialogue. Focus on the positive and personal stories. Put yourself on the line to bring out the voices of the unheard. We are the elite and we are responsible. We need to build communities and connections. It’s all about systemic change. We need systems leadership for a values-driven Revolution. Do not forget the emotional, intuitive and spiritual aspects. We need more women leaders. You can rewire the brain for inclusiveness, equality and innovation. We need to mobilise large scale action and innovate locally to build trust. Emerging technologies can have positive power (watch out for AI!). Within our system even tiny things can make a difference. Be yourself. It’s up to us." etc.  (I’ll have to postpone my analysis of emerging signals for a while, as my notes are temporarily in limbo on the phone that I lost a few days before leaving Japan.)
+One (unsurprising) signal that stuck with me is how often Europe is seen as troubled. People keep drawing parallels between the 1930s and current events. There is a sense of unease that Europe could pull the world into chaos and conflict once again. There was a sense of urgency, with warnings that we should not dismiss things that seem ridiculous to most of us (such as Brexit or a Trump presidency). The voices providing viable alternatives are too quiet, too abstract, too fragmented. We are not speaking in a language 'the majority' want to hear. In light of such views, our work with 'future preparedness', inhabiting uncertainty and visionary adaptation seems quite relevant for the years to come. Definitely an aspect of FoAM’s work to keep developing and applying in different contexts.
+This brings me to my aim to spread feelers and observe which aspects of our work resonate with YGLs. Aside from (experiential) futures, our organisational transiency, Doing Nothing, and more broadly working with life transitions grabbed people’s attention. If we wanted to offer transiencies for people outside of the cultural sector, there would likely be quite some interest. For people who can’t commit to long transiencies, shorter retreats, rituals and other experiential formats seem attractive. Generally speaking, people were interested in our approach to connecting personal, organisational and systemic transformations. "Pure" workshop facilitation was less of interest than content-driven participatory experiences, such as food futures. Our work with food as both topic and experiential format is an aspect that still captures people’s imagination.
+'Stillness' was received with praise and gratitude, as was my simple business card ritual. It reminded me that we need to find appealing ways to "package" our work for such events. Small, encapsulated, distilled experiences that can give people a felt sense of what we do. Describing our work almost always falls short, especially for people who have about 15 seconds of attention before moving on to the next conversation.
+I realised just how out of practice I am with fast-paced networking. In this phase of my transiency, I’m more inclined to deep, personal conversations rather than confidently pitching the next big idea. I kept swinging from feeling worthless and out of place to having heartfelt conversations with old friends like Penny Low, Raju Narisetti, Kohei Nishiyama or Paula Escobar, as well as finding promising new alliances, including people such as Julianne Lee Jihyun, Sputniko!, Felicitas von Peter or Julia Novy-Hildesley.
+The World Forum on Sport and Culture was a shorter, less interactive event, with panel discussions ranging from 'The City of the Future' to 'Japanese pop-culture', 'Aikido' and 'Performing under pressure' to 'Growing up Digitally' and 'the Future of Food'. The highlights for me were the two contrasting cultural evenings. One was a trance-inducing kami invocation in the form of the traditional performance of Divine Dance SAMBASO (Kami Hisomi Iki), directed by the wonderful [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Sugimoto|Hiroshi Sugimoto]].
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30434784712/}}\\
+The other event was held on the 52nd floor of the Mori Art Museum, including a spectacular promenade performance by the formidable [[http://www.thelgbtupdate.com/aya-bambi-two-lovers-taking-over-the-world-of-dance-feature/|AyaBambi]] and crew. The evening was described as:
+<blockquote>"a powerful presentation of the strength of Tokyo and its metabolism where ceaseless change and updates continue in a display of formidable local character while ensconced in trans-historical, trans-media and global networks. Tokyo - the only city in the world that is Asian and animistic, bathing in the disorder of chaos, and yet gives form to these traits with ultimate sophistication."</blockquote>
+Just reading this description made me want to move to Tokyo ASAP. The event itself was ultimate eye-candy - from the night panorama of the city and the glowing installations to the well groomed guests enrobed in elegantly weird designs by Yamamoto, Miyake, Watanabe and the like. I very rarely find myself as a participant at an event with so much aesthetically resonant sensory bombardment. Yum.
+=== Week 36 ===
+The trip from Brussels to Tokyo was my first long haul flight since the surgery in 2015 and the subsequent onset of kinetosis (motion sickness). The flight in particular, and the trip as a whole were experiments in maintaining a nomadic lifestyle with an unpredictable body and dwindling energy levels. I prepared for it as best I could. I packed a 'survival kit' containing an arsenal of pills and emergency food supplies. The travel plan included generous pauses between travel and work or socialising (in case I was too incapacitated). The most difficult (but crucial) mental preparation was to allow myself to rely completely on my travel companion - Nik in this case - to navigate unfamiliar situations while my brain was too occupied with bodily discomfort to do anything else. This was quite a contrast to the alertness of my mind and body which I used to rely on previously. This time I couldn’t. Or more correctly: I couldn’t be sure I could. Sometimes my thoughts were so clear and my limbs so agile to make me believe that I was being too cautious. Then suddenly the tide would turn and I couldn’t read, navigate, nor look at anything moving. Other times I was too nauseous and short of breath to do anything else but walk slowly and occasionally swoon down onto a bench or lean on walls. It helped when I could be unwell in a calm, energising environment. Hence we planned the first week in a hot spring, as an inspiring buffer between long travel and the YGL summit. I spent a lot of my time sitting and staring at the garden.
+{{::3539-02.jpg |}}\\
+//"The garden is located in the center of the site like a large thicket of assorted hardwoods. Here, the trees grow freely and thrive as if one is part of nature. Close your eyes, feel the light breeze, and breathe with the nature as if you have entered the country of nothing - mukayu."// -Sachiko & Kazunari Nakamichi
+We stayed in a ryokan owned by Sachiko and Kazunari Nakamichi, whose aesthetic sensibilities are very close to ours. My senses were soothed by the atmosphere from the moment we stepped through the door. Jetlag and nausea only added to the sensation of sinking into a timeless, purpose-less present.
+<blockquote>
+"An empty room will be filled with light because of its emptiness. These are the words of the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who lived 2300 years ago. His words signify that a mind entirely free of everything exists in a place of nothing - a place belonging to nowhere.
+Mukayu (無何有) is a word from the philosopher Zhuangzi (莊子), meaning “non-existence”, “non-purpose” or the natural state as it is. He used this word in his essay “Mukayu country”. In Mukayu country the values of people are overturned. Things considered useless are instead regarded as possessing great value.
+Take for example a large tree standing beside a road. Because the tree is bent and twisted, it is of no use for timber and so is left uncut. And because it has grown so tall, it is able to give a pleasant shade to weary travellers on the road. Consider the time that remains as empty space in a busy schedule book.
+It is in fact time filled with freedom because it is empty. It is the peace of mind found in the shade of a large tree that had initially appeared useless."
+- Kiyoshi Sey Takeyama
+</blockquote>
+Staying in a ryokan marked the beginning of our exploration of Kaiseki (懐石), a Japanese multi-course meal that arose in response to overly decorated and formalised Honzen ryôri. Kaiseki literally means "pocket stone", describing warm stones the Zen monks wore inside their clothing to warm their bellies and require less food. Over several centuries, kaiseki developed into an art form in itself which includes the freshest seasonal ingredients, paired with carefully designed crockery, ikebana, delicate sake and tea. The tastes and scents are subtle, as if inviting the diners to practice the art of noticing. The food tends to be raw, lightly grilled, steamed or simmered, easily digestible and uplifting. Every dish is prepared and presented with utmost care and the whole meal - including the gestures involved in serving and eating - becomes part of a multisensory experience. As Ishige notes in the [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25565990-history-of-japanese-food|History and Culture of Japanese Food]] - “Japanese haute cuisine since the eighteenth century has sought to present the philosophy of the garden on the dining table.”
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/30803090562/}}\\
+We spent three days immersed in (temple) gardens and steeped in edible gardens of kaiseki meals (IBS compatible). There were countless moments when I felt my cells resonating with the environment and the culture that emerged from it. In the [[http://www.natadera.com/EN/index.html|Natadera temple]] I experienced the Japanese connection to nature in a distilled form, while in the Kakusenki gorge I spent hours dissolved in wonder on the fine edges between wilderness and cultivation. There was nothing else to do but absorb the experience, enjoying the visceral and mental resonances. The world imbued with "kami" (神, spirit or essence in Shinto religion).
+<blockquote>
+ …kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms. Rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami and people exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity… the power of phenomena that inspire a sense of wonder and awe in the beholder (the sacred), testifying to the divinity of such a phenomenon." - [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto| About Shinto]]
+</blockquote>
+I had landed in the land of Princess Mononoke, where the syncretic interactions between shinto and buddhism have developed into a form of nature worship echoing with viriditas, shamanism and seasonal pagan rites that I intuitively feel drawn to. Furthermore, as opposed to many pagan traditions, shinto embraces all human and non-human entities - including technology - as sacred nature. Talismans are sold to protect computers from crashes and rites performed on car assembly lines. I could taste kami in the food we ate, sense it in small acts of kindness performed spontaneously by people we came across, see it in the co-existence of anime and the animated world (in all the different meanings of the word). It was as if the dormant kami in me awoke and remembered that this might be its long lost home.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/30345269266/}}\\
 ==== September 2016 ====
@@ Line 12: / Line 404: @@
 === Week 31-35 ===
-After weeks of being in the flow of my transiency, I was drawn in the midst of other people’s problems. For the first half of September I was in Pula, surrounded by my various "clans". It was one week before the general election, with dark thoughts colouring every conversation. Unemployment, poverty, corruption, rampant greed, nationalism, broken relationships, life-threatening illnesses, to name but a few. A general sense of disillusionment and helplessness, tempered with a good dose of Balkan black humour, fuelled with copious amounts of coffee and alcohol. It was difficult to watch the people I care about feel so worn out by life’s circumstances. Especially when it came to the widespread resistance to - or impossibility of - change. I would listen, without giving advice, without attempting to help or intervene. That was all I could do, all they wanted me to do.
+After weeks of being in the flow of my transiency, I found myself in the midst of other people’s problems. For the first half of September I was in Pula, surrounded by my various "clans". It was one week before the general election, with dark thoughts colouring every conversation. Unemployment, poverty, corruption, rampant greed, nationalism, broken relationships, life-threatening illnesses, to name but a few. A general sense of disillusionment and helplessness, tempered with a good dose of Balkan black humour, fuelled with copious amounts of coffee and alcohol. It was difficult to watch the people I care about feel so worn out by life’s circumstances. Especially when it came to the widespread resistance to - or impossibility of - change. I would listen, without giving advice, without attempting to help or intervene. That was all I could do, all they wanted me to do.
-Knowing when (not) to intervene is indeed an art. And a craft, in need of practice. FoAM’s motto "grow your own worlds" alludes to an ability to cultivate one’s own reality. Our work with futures is all about imagining how things could be otherwise, then experimenting and prototyping the alternatives. When sharing my experiences, people would tell me that I live in a sci-fi world. That such things were not possible in their lives. Whether I was talking about using meditation to live with post-op pain, or about having funding for an organisation-wide transiency. My life, work and worldview seem to exist in another dimension. Because of my (non-conformist) lifestyle, people think that my life is easy. "You’ll find a way, you always do."
+Knowing when (not) to intervene is indeed an art. And a craft, in need of practice. FoAM’s motto "grow your own worlds" alludes to an ability to cultivate one’s own reality. Our work with futures is all about imagining how things could be otherwise, then experimenting and prototyping the alternatives. When sharing my experiences, most people would tell me that I live in a sci-fi world. That such things were not possible in their lives. Whether I was talking about using meditation to live with post-op pain, or about having funding for an organisation-wide transiency. My life, work and worldview seem to exist in another dimension. Because of my (unfamiliar) lifestyle, people seem to think that my life is easy and my problems trivial. "You’ll find a way, you always do."
-There were exceptions to this pattern, of course. As well as the wonderful time I spent with my mother, I reconnected with a few high-school friends with whom I still have a lot in common. New opportunities for collaboration and sharing arose naturally. An exhibition on organic abstraction, a workshop for cancer patients, a surprising interest in experiential futures and occasional gatherings of "hermits anonymous". It’s encouraging that I can resume conversations with these people as if no time had passed, even though we only see each other infrequently. At times it makes me sad that the people I’d like to work with are so scattered around the globe. Other times it’s a delight to know that in almost any region of the world I travel to, there are people I could collaborate with. In dozens of cities across all continents there is at least one person with whom I can have a heartfelt connection.
+There were exceptions to this pattern, of course. As well as the wonderful time I spent with my mother, brother and grandmother, I reconnected with a few high-school friends with whom I still have a lot in common, including Elena Skoko, Paola Orlic and Branka Bencic. New opportunities for collaboration and sharing arose from several conversations. An exhibition on organic abstraction, a workshop for cancer patients, a surprising interest in experiential futures and occasional gatherings of "hermits anonymous". It’s encouraging that I can resume conversations with these people as if no time had passed, even though we only see each other infrequently. At times it makes me sad that the people I’d like to work with are so scattered around the globe. Other times it’s a delight to know that in almost any region of the world I travel to, there are people I could collaborate with. In dozens of cities across all continents there is at least one person with whom I can have a heartfelt connection.
 {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/29525041995}}\\
@@ Line 26: / Line 418: @@
 The publications I had hoped to "harvest" this autumn have been left by the wayside, while I let myself be railroaded (by myself above all others) to various other pursuits. To begin with, new opportunities for 2017 are beginning to arise. With the arrival of autumn people have begun planning for next year and asking for input. I ended up writing three proposals, and accepted a keynote at the [[http://anticipation2017.org/|Anticipation conference]]. At the moment these seem in line with what I’d like to do after the transiency - experience design, experiential futures and process facilitation. Still, it’s risky doing such things when my/our post-transiency directions and purpose hasn’t solidified yet.
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/29703288282/}}\\
 Doing this kind of work puts me in a state of mind which is the opposite of fallow. Accounting for FoAM and my one-woman company has further compartmentalised my brain into spreadsheet-compatible units. My free-flowing openness and joyful creativity of the summer quickly narrowed to a goal-driven mindset in a matter of days. This has happened several times during my transiency, and it still amazes (and concerns) me how quickly I switch into "organisational mode". It’s not something I want to shy away from. I love the feeling of an ordered overview of accounts (especially when they match my budget projections!), or the sense of accomplishment that comes after submitting a complex and well-rounded funding proposal.
-I put quite some time and mental energy into writing up a description of {{ :hosting:integrativeprocessfacilitation.pdf |integrative process facilitation}} with some of the hosting community. It felt right to do this as part of my transiency. Process facilitation is one of things from FoAM’s past that make sense for me to continue in our next phase. Working on the text and diagrams helped me clarify exactly what it is that I want to be doing, and how my skills and interest can be complementary with others in the group. I think this working group has potential to become a true community of practice. Our respective (un)availability and travel schedules still remain a challenge, which could be remedied if there were means for us to work intensively on projects for short periods as well as having a way to maintain momentum when we’re not directly working together. It’s a bit like the FoAM network… Working directly on such challenges though is something for after my transiency. For now, I’ll use the description of the work in my scoping conversations with potential clients and partners.
-[[http://entangled.systems/stillness/|Stillness]] was another enjoyable endeavour this month. The proofs of the book were ready for our inspection a few of days after I got back from Croatia. A couple of weeks later we received 200 copies at FoAM. The book is beautiful. Not only as a book of wonderful photographs, but as a physical manifestation of the fallow period. Even after looking at the photos hundreds of times on various screens and prints, the book is still as inviting for me to slow down and notice the many details, the delightfully rough texture of the paper, the filmic sequence, etc. The whole process and result of this project (including the event in February) were a highlight of this year for me.
+Wotking on the [[http://entangled.systems/stillness/|Stillness]] book was the most enjoyable endeavour this month. The proofs of the book were ready for our inspection a few of days after I got back from Croatia. A couple of weeks later we received 200 copies at FoAM. The book is beautiful. Not only as a book of wonderful photographs, but as a physical manifestation of the fallow period. Even after looking at the photos hundreds of times on various screens and prints, the book is still as inviting for me to slow down and notice the many details, the delightfully rough texture of the paper, the filmic sequence, etc. The whole process and result of this project (including the event in February) were a highlight of this year for me.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/30045207751/}}\\
+I put quite some time and mental energy into writing up a description of {{ :hosting:integrativeprocessfacilitation.pdf |integrative process facilitation}} with some of the hosting community. It felt right to do this as part of my transiency. Process facilitation is one of things from FoAM’s past that make sense for me to continue in our next phase. Working on the text and diagrams helped me clarify exactly what it is that I want to be doing, and how my skills and interest can be complementary with others in the group. I think this working group has potential to become a true community of practice. Our respective (un)availability and travel schedules still remain a challenge, which could be remedied if there were means for us to work intensively on projects for short periods as well as having a way to maintain momentum when we’re not directly working together. It’s a bit like the FoAM network… Working directly on such challenges though is something for after my transiency. For now, I’ll use the description of the work in my scoping conversations with potential clients and partners.
+What has made these weeks less enjoyable was the context switching. Funding and accounting, scheduling skype calls and meetings, stillness promotion, travel, writing, Filastine and Kate Rich’s BBB residency, aperos, birthday celebrations, a bizarre salon on immaterial values (which made me realise just how much I truly do not understand some Flemish people), making a decision about the studio (we’ll keep it until the end of March 2017, at least), medical appointments, designing a ritual for [[:hosting/october_2016|unmotherhood]], planning for Japan, convoluted renewal procedures for my Dutch passport, lovely but nauseating electronic music concerts… For three weeks I felt like I was in a tiny room filled with strobe-lights and screaming women. I must reduce the amount of such stroboscopic, high-pitched experiences in my life, literally and figuratively.
+Aside from working with the process facilitation group, the (ambiguity of the) [[:/hosting/start|hosting community]] and the utterly draining [[:hosting/re-treat|re-treat]] (and its aftermath) have plunged me into an incomprehensible emotional disaster. I have been accused - by one of my closest friends - of blocking her and other people's personal and professional development, of being aggressive and angry, of not allowing anyone to help me or to step up, of laying blame on others without ever bothering to look into myself, of disregarding my friends' support in my illness, of having extremely negative energy that pushes people away and is destroying the group, et cetera. What I hoped it would be the first ever reading from my cancer memoir to a group of compassionate friends lead to a heartbreaking misunderstanding which I can't grasp or resolve because my friend is refusing to speak to me and half of the group isn't responding to my emails any more.
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/29703288282/}}\\
+I didn't elaborate on all that happened with the hosting community on this page, as I wanted to avoid inadvertently offending people. After what happened during the retreat I'm even more sure that some in this group are prone to take my words personally and find them offensive no matter what I write. So I won't write anything about this any more. Suffice to say that I am rather crushed by the experience and that I need distance to understand if and how to continue being a part of the group. My mother was quite categorical about it: "Enough! Enough of you taking the blame for other people's fears and insecurities. You have done enough. More than enough. You must get away from these people right now, or you will crack. You cannot consider them your friends any more. They do not see you, they do not appreciate you, no matter what you do. Forget them. Leave. Never speak to them again." Well, for my mother, the epitome of compassion and understanding to fire a tirade such as this at me means that something is truly wrong. I am tempted to follow her advice, but at the same time I still can't believe that we can't find ways to heal each other's emotional wounds and grow through conflict. If nothing else, to come together to reconcile our differences (or agree to disagree) and find a way to have a conscious closure. Instead, all my questions are disappearing into the void of silence and separation. The opposite of "all discomforts and problems should immediately be brought out into the open", which was one of the first principles we came up with. Also, I know that there are some people in this group who do appreciate my contributions and my personality as it is. Why would I leave them and all the potential that is still present in (a part) of this group? I hope that some distance will help me find some meaningful answers. If resolution proves impossible, at the very least I hope to find enough equanimity to close this chapter on my own. I want to be able to forgive myself and others for causing so much unnecessary suffering.
-What has made these weeks less enjoyable was the context switching - including the (ambiguity of the) [[:/hosting/start|hosting community]] and the emotionally draining [[:hosting/re-treat|re-treat]] (and its aftermath), funding and accounting, scheduling skype calls and meetings, stillness promotion, travel, writing, Filastine and Kate Rich’s BBB residency, aperos, birthday celebrations, a bizarre salon on immaterial values (which made me realise just how much I truly do not understand some Flemish people), making a decision about the studio (we’ll keep it until the end of March 2017, at least), medical appointments, resigning a ritual for [[:hosting/october_2016|unmotherhood]], planning for Japan, a painful misunderstanding with a close friend, convoluted renewal procedures for my Dutch passport, lovely but nauseating electronic music concerts… For three weeks I felt like I was in a tiny room filled with strobe-lights and screaming women. I must reduce the amount of such stroboscopic, high-pitched experiences in my life, literally and figuratively.
 {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/29957944892/}}\\
@@ Line 41: / Line 441: @@
 ==Back to Not Holding Back==
-During my transiency, I have uncovered parts of myself which lay dormant or have been held with tight reins for years, while I was running an organisation and supporting dozens of people through their personal, professional, financial and emotional issues. This year I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any more. I want to be able to enjoy the flow of my creativity in whatever I do. I should either fully commit to something or not do it at all. At the end of my transiency I want to have a clear sense of purpose, so that I can better prioritise and only work on things I can completely stand behind. I have only a limited number of years to live with dwindling energy, and I can’t allow myself to be so drained any more.
+During my transiency, I have uncovered parts of myself which lay dormant or have been held with tight reins for years, while I was running an organisation and supporting dozens of people through their personal, professional, financial and emotional issues. This year I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any more. I want to be able to enjoy the flow of my creativity in whatever I do. I should either fully commit to something or not do it at all. At the end of my transiency I want to have a clear(er) sense of purpose, so that I can better prioritise and only work on things I can completely stand behind. I have only a limited number of years to live with dwindling energy, and I can’t allow myself to be so drained any more.
 <blockquote>… it’s not about the joy, it’s about the work, and there has to be some kind of joy in the work, some kind from among the many kinds, including the joy of hard truths told honestly. Carpenters don’t say, I’m just not feeling it today, or I don’t give a damn about this staircase and whether people fall through it; how you feel is something that you cannot take too seriously on your way to doing something, and doing something is a means of not being stuck in how you feel. That is, there’s a kind of introspection that’s wallowing and being stuck, and there’s a kind that gets beyond that into something more interesting and then maybe takes you out into the world or into the place where deepest interior and cosmological phenomena are at last talking to each other.
@@ Line 54: / Line 454: @@
 |koyo]] (autumn leaves), [[http://wfsc2016.mext.go.jp/en/about/|sport and culture]], networking with [[https://www.weforum.org/communities/forum-young-global-leaders|Young Global Leaders]], shojin ryori and kaiseki research, and other promising adventures...
-{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/29187706194/}}\\
+{{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/deziluzija/29749507303/}}\\
 ==== August 2016 ====
@@ Line 140: / Line 540: @@
 === Week 27/28 ===
-Similar to the first two weeks of the transiency, I felt as if I was moving one step forward, two steps back. In February this rhythm felt frustrating, now it seemed just right. I spent quite some time looking over the materials from the last six months to distill insights. I'm hoping they will help me focus and prioritise the next six months. Some of these are summarised above, others are still in note form scattered across digital and physical notebooks. The "one step forward" was actually many half-steps in many directions.
+Similar to the first two weeks of the transiency, I felt as if I was moving one step forward, two steps back. In February this rhythm felt frustrating, now it seemed just right. I spent quite some time looking over the materials from the last six months to distill insights. I'm hoping they will help me focus the next six months. Some of these are summarised above, others are still in note form scattered across digital and physical notebooks. The "one step forward" was actually many half-steps in many directions.
-I went back to the one draft I wrote (in November last year) for the 'kaiseki' version of the Grow Your Own Worlds publication. I got the 'transient realities' text in a better shape, now awaiting Nik and/or Alkan to get their teeth into it. I rationalised the [[/f15/overview|chapters]] (there are seven now instead of ten), which makes it a bit more manageable. To help me get into the 'worlds' (aka chapters), I began the humongous process of cleaning up FoAM's digital archive, starting with (!) the [[http://lib.fo.am/index?do=index|Libarynth]] itself. I dared editing the [[http://lib.fo.am|front page]], which lead to days of wiki-gnoming. I enjoyed doing it, but it also reminded me just how much mess there is to clean up and just how ungrateful the task it really is.
+I went back to the one draft I wrote (in November last year) for the 'kaiseki' version of the Grow Your Own Worlds publication. I got the [[:/f15/transient_reality|transient reality]] text in a better shape, now awaiting Nik and/or Alkan to get their teeth into it. I rationalised the [[/f15/overview|chapters]] (there are seven now instead of ten), which makes it a bit more manageable. To help me get into the 'worlds' (aka chapters), I began the humongous process of cleaning up FoAM's digital archive, starting with (!) the [[http://lib.fo.am/index?do=index|Libarynth]] itself. I dared editing the [[http://lib.fo.am|front page]], which lead to days of wiki-gnoming. I enjoyed doing it, but it also reminded me just how much mess there is to clean up and just how ungrateful the task it really is.
 A slightly less daunting task was putting together a proposal for the Gulbenkian Foundation, for work in 2017. I realised that being an 'experience design consultant' could be a job cut out for me. I never thought about it this way. At FoAM, experience design meant being involved in all aspects, from the initial idea, through to implementation, presentation (that we endearingly call the 'art jail', as we usually sit in dark rooms behind the scenes and/or guide the public through the experience), documentation and clean up. By the end of it, I am usually happy with the result but physically broken. The CGF proposal is quite the opposite: all the benefits of our design expertise, without the weight of implementation. At least theoretically. Let's see how it goes.
@@ Line 292: / Line 692: @@
 {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/28181125671/}}\\
-As I was "binding my negative energy" and describing my [[hosting/july_2016#conundrums|conundrums]] in the closing circle, people felt the need to "help", defend themselves or prove me wrong. A known impulse in situations when it is easier to give advice than to sit with the discomfort. I find advice in such moments completely counterproductive (it makes me feel incompetent), but I was too caught up in the whirlwind of hosting and participating (aware of the time slipping away) to recognise what was going on while it was happening. I did what I needed to do, but not exactly in the way I was hoping to. No matter, it’s all a part of the practice…
+As I was "binding my negative energy" and describing my [[hosting/july_2016#conundrums|conundrums]] in the closing circle, people felt the need to "help", defend themselves or prove me wrong. A known impulse in situations when well meaning feedback is taken personally, when it is easier to give advice than to sit with the discomfort. I find advice in such moments completely counterproductive (it makes me feel incompetent), but I was too caught up in the whirlwind of hosting and participating (aware of the time slipping away) to recognise what was going on while it was happening. I did what I needed to do, but not exactly in the way I was hoping to. It’s all a part of the practice…
+My conundrums about the hosting community:
+  * How can we, in this community, find a good flow between creative and receptive energies, between collective, goal-driven activities and supporting/nurturing individual members (think of the flow in the yin-yang symbol)?
+  * How can we co-create a light and clear community structure to avoid the "tyranny of structurelessness" (see quote below), allowing the group to become agile and adaptive?
+  * How do we balance the drive to hang out together and co-create new activities with the "time & money" pressure the individual members are struggling with?
+  * How can we be available, committed, reliable and punctual, so that we can enjoy "being and doing" together? So that the logistics and co-ordination tasks can be evenly and effectively distributed and exchanged, while also having time to socialise, celebrate and relax, i.e. enjoy each others' company?
 While we were cleaning up, Kathleen came back from the metro a few minutes after she left, having witnessed someone jumping under the train. This refocused everyone’s attention. Stevie and I had planned to improvise a guided meditation which didn’t happen during the Open Space, but it now it seemed more than appropriate.
@@ Line 298: / Line 709: @@
 Stevie played the hurdy-gurdy while I spoke, asking questions that I asked myself in the difficult month of June: What does distress feel like? What’s underneath this feeling? What does this difficult situation want to teach me? What does it tell me about this moment? What do I notice right now? What if I had only a year to live? A month? A day? An hour? Just a few moments? What would really matter? We closed by acknowledging the preciousness of being alive. Letting everything else fade into the background, as Stevie's sound gradually faded into silence.
-At the end of the meditation we were all shivering, with tears in our eyes. All my doubts and fears temporarily dissolved. I felt in the flow again. I sensed what was needed, poured all my intention and artistry into creating an experience through improvisation. The experience was nurturing, while I got my "fix" of compassionate leadership and improvised creativity. A flow of yin and yang, of masculine and feminine drives. Goal-driven, creative nurturing that worked.
+At the end of the meditation we were all shivering, with tears in our eyes. All my doubts and fears temporarily dissolved. I felt in the flow again. I sensed what was needed, poured all my intention and artistry into creating an experience through improvisation. The experience was nurturing, while I got my "fix" of improvised creativity. A flow of yin and yang, of masculine and feminine drives. Goal-driven, creative nurturing that worked.
 A slightly longer flow experience for me these last couple of weeks was co-authoring the [[:/future_fabulators/making_things_physical|Making things physical]] essay with Nik, Tim and Tina. I enjoyed the collaboration immensely. The topic was Physical Narratives, which Time’s Up explored more actively in the last years, but we at FoAM have done our fair share in the past. I took the lead, setup calls and proposed a structure. We discussed it, everyone made comments and we jointly made changes. Time’s Up started the first round of actual writing, sent us a draft that was about 1000 words too long, so it was our task to shorten it without losing the essence. It was a major rewrite, but I thought it was much better for it. As this was happening at the same time as the hosting gathering at the end of June, I was terrified that I had bulldozed over the text in the same way I did with too firmly framing the workshop. To my delighted surprise, the response was very positive. The article improved, and it didn’t matter who did the improving. Relieved, we spent a few more rounds of touching up and nudging the text and images until we were all satisfied. At the beginning and the end we spent time socialising and cheering over skype. There was time and space to talk about our lives, but none of our personal issues impacted the flow of the work. Our egos were left at the door and when we got onto working, the quality of the article was all that mattered. While the agreements were generally respected, there was also sufficient flexibility so that when something had to change, everyone was informed and could adapt, without stress. We finished the article three days before the deadline and could all stand behind the results.
@@ Line 667: / Line 1078: @@
   * Community of Contemporary Contemplation and Celebration
   * Inspire, rather then merely enable
-  * I feel good when I’m engaged in visionary endeavours with a wide purpose
+  * I feel good when I’m engaged in visionary endeavours with a wide purpose. I enjoy observing patterns of reality in and around myself, then translating them in words and multisensory experiences. While I love writing, I also need to see my work more "manifest", as experiences and other embodied experiments. However, to create experiences as we used to at FoAM, we need a different (and bigger) production team. I always end up exhausting and damaging myself in the process, even though I love the results… We should find ways to design experiences for maximum effect with minimum effort…
-  * I enjoy observing patterns of reality in and around myself, then translating them in words and multisensory experiences
-  * In difficult situations I shouldn’t depend on people I can’t trust; I tend to feel better as soon as I can do "something" to alleviate the difficulties, no matter how small the "something" is.
   * Nik and I work best together on long-term research, writing, creation and reflection, away from busy production schedules and hectic social situations. When we work with other people, it's best to do it in short, concentrated bursts.
-  * While I love writing, I also need to see my work more "manifest", as experiences and other embodied experiments. However, to create experiences as we used to at FoAM, we need a different (and bigger) production team. I always end up exhausting and damaging myself in the process, even though I love the results… We managed to do it "lightly" when we designed "resting" activities for the BSB in 2015: minimum production, maximum effect…
+  * We should research how to more with private foundations (like CGF)
-  * We should work more with private foundations like CGF
-  * Busy periods must be interspersed with quiet, contemplative ones. Ideally the same time spent in "action" should be spent in "reflection".
   * I’d like to work with Nik and Stevie to design a series of soundtracks for contemplation/meditation/stillness; contemporary sound/music/field recordings, guided meditations, etc. - This needs to be reclaimed from the horribly shallow new-age-ish music and meditations that have spread like disease online. this has lead to contemplation and meditation being regarded as 'fluffy' (cf. Nik’s publisher hating the title Stillness). I’d like to make an artistically qualitative meditation CD, with great sound and guidance that doesn’t shy away from darkness…
-  * Rasa, will we ever start the Open Sauces Cooking Club?
+  * I need to work with competent and committed people, otherwise I get frustrated. They should be people I respect and I should find the object of our collaboration worthwhile. We have to be more discerning in our selection of collaborators, based on the qualitative resonance with their work and life. There has to be a clearer difference between collaboration and mentoring/teaching/coaching (or other "nurturing" support), where competence isn’t of primary importance. In the latter, commitment is still key, but instead of competence, potential and motivation are more important.
-  * Nik, Alkan we ever finish the Patabotanical Tarot?
-  * I need to work with competent and committed people, otherwise I get frustrated. They should be people I respect and I should find the object of our collaboration worthwhile. We have to be more discerning in our selection of collaborators, based on the qualitative resonance with their work and life. There has to be a clearer difference between collaboration and mentoring/teaching/coaching (or other "nurturing" support), where competence isn’t of primary importance. In the latter, commitment is still key, but instead of competence, potential and motivation are more important. These two modes of working (creative/supporting) should not be mixed as much as they used to be at the "past" FoAM.
-  * It doesn’t help me when I share an insecurity or difficulty with people and they jump in to give me advice. That’s actually counterproductive. It makes me feel weak and ignorant, as if I don’t know what I’m doing and others know better. Usually people offer advice because they care, with very good intentions. I don’t always notice it while it’s happening, but when the conversation ends I feel worse than when it started. It’s a common pattern I need to address, by being more aware at the moment it’s happening. Without offending or hurting people, I should let them know that if I want advice, I’ll ask for it. Otherwise I just want them to hear me and allow me to be present as I am, with all my weaknesses and doubts… Which, for some people, can be difficult - we have to stay in the pain together, without an immediate reflex to "help" or provide answers.
   * I’d like to write up all the various solitary (seasonal) rituals that I designed/improvised over the years… and write it in a way that could be used as a "kit" for others who’d like to try it themselves, including intentions, colours, materials, food, meditations, actions, etc.
   * It might be valuable to write an article on FoAM’s approach to residencies and other ways to support creativity. I don’t think I want to host residents in the near future, so it might be good to record FoAM's successful residency formats "for posterity".
   * Similarly, an article on FoAM’s "Lab Approach" could be a good thing to write about. We have extensive experience with it, while it’s just becoming "fashionable" in a range of sectors.
   * I’d like to make an "immersive" lecture-performance (with participatory elements) based on my insights during the last seven years living with cancer (and other uncertainties), with readings from my diaries, photos of my changing body, examples of practices, sounds, sights, scents and foods that made me appreciate being alive (or got me through difficult situations)
-  * Insights from my green-and-purple equinox ritual (intentions: thawing, getting unstuck, cleansing, aligning with viriditas, new growth, turning outwards)
-    * Never completely turn your back to the past. It can become dangerous. Instead, keep the awareness of what lead to this moment present as background radiation. (the stump of the "winter" candle almost burnt the house down)
-    * The magic of the moment is only unveiled if one is completely absorbed in it. Then the minuscule changes appear delightful and miraculous. (meditating on the opening of the rose of Jericho)
-    * Unfolding and turning outwards is fast and exciting, but the process of greening and revival (which is the essence of unfolding) is much slower and imperceptible, much more difficult to keep focus, attention and wakefulness…
-    * Purple artichoke is a perfect Ostara ritual food…
   * Doing Nothing allows me to become more perceptive and notice what needs tending in and around me. It’s a process, an intimate courting of cultivation and letting grow…
-  * Perhaps the interest in Thriving in Uncertainty is the connection it makes between abstract ideas or societal megatrends and our own lives (as individuals and community (the sector)). This connection interests me to pursue more in a wide range of our activities. We have done this with other initiatives (prehearsals, ARNs), but we never described our work in these terms... something to explore...
+  * Perhaps the interest in Thriving in Uncertainty is the connection it makes between abstract ideas or societal megatrends and our own lives (as individuals and community (the sector)). This connection interests me to pursue more in a wide range of our activities.
-  * I should improve my own online presence...
 === Week 6/7 ===
-words, 939760 characters, 233 pages further... I have finished writing up my life in the last seven years. Instead of writing a summary of the week, here's the last entry from my diary, written on the 22nd of March 2016, with the soundtrack of loud sirens and helicopters outside of my quiet living room. There have been two bomb attacks at the airport and Maalbeek metro station. Dozens of people dead, hundreds wounded. Considering the scale of other armed conflicts in the world, this doesn’t sound significant, but every life lost through such pointless violence is a tragedy.
+words, 939760 characters, 233 pages further... I have finished writing up my life in the last seven years. Instead of writing a summary of the week, here's the last entry from my diary, written on the 22nd of March 2016, with the soundtrack of loud sirens and helicopters outside of my quiet living room. There have been two bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and Maalbeek metro station. Dozens of people dead, hundreds wounded. Considering the scale of other armed conflicts in the world, this doesn’t sound significant, but every life lost through such pointless violence is a tragedy.
-It’s beautiful early spring weather out there today, after a week of greyness. I was planning to go to Jubelpark and pick up my new credit card from Schumann, which - if I took the metro - would have taken me past the Maalbeek station. I decided not to go and stick with the writing instead, which I hoped to finish today so I could dedicate all of tomorrow to a vernal equinox ritual, celebrating balance of day-and-night, the inception of spring and alignment with viriditas. For me, this is a time to begin turning outwards again and watching new growth emerging in and around me, as well as thawing of frozen places in myself by meditating on forgiveness. The latter I started already on Sunday (at 5:30AM, the moment of the vernal equinox), as there is a lot I need to forgive, starting with myself, then expanding to include people and situations that caused me to harden, become defensive and judgmental.
+It’s beautiful early spring weather out there today, after a week of greyness. I was planning to go for a walk in Jubelpark, as I had to be in my bank at Schumann, which - if I took the metro - would have taken me past the Maalbeek station. I decided not to go and stick with the writing instead, which I hoped to finish today so I could dedicate all of tomorrow to a vernal equinox ritual.  A celebration of balance between day-and-night, the beginning of spring and alignment with viriditas. For me, this is a time to begin turning outwards again. Time to thaw the frozen places in myself by meditating on forgiveness, then watch new growth emerging in and around me. I started the meditation on forgiveness already on Sunday (at 5:30AM, the astronomical vernal equinox). There is a lot I need to forgive, starting with myself, then expanding to include people and situations that caused me to harden, become more defensive and judgmental than I'd like to be.
 {{::writing-retreat-w3.png|}}
@@ Line 705: / Line 1103: @@
 My life and all of the hardships I was describing in the last weeks pale in comparison. I’m glad that I was very close to the end of writing up all my notes and diaries of the last seven years. I’m sure this rude awakening would have changed the writing substantially. The depths of my inner life would have been lost to external noise and relative irrelevance of my little worries. Yet for me, this month was invaluable. I must take care to nurture my "inner hermit" in my daily work and life in the future, even when I’m not in retreat. I feel too good now to let it all dissolve when I begin interacting with people again.
-For four weeks I kept a relatively regular routine: waking early, meditating, exercising, having breakfast, writing, having lunch, resting, writing, ending the day by going for a walk, meditating or dancing, then relaxing with movies or audiobooks. The regular rhythm was an anchor to help me stay with my life story, no matter how painful it was to have to relive it all again, or to keep on track when it all seemed irrelevant. When I wouldn’t worry about the results and just enjoyed the process of introspection, it was an emotionally healing experience. As soon as I would wonder whether it would be useful for anyone else, the doubts would arise. Who would want to read this? In what format should I present it? How is this useful? Why do I want to work on this material any more? How dare I think that my life would be worth reading about? Would I hurt people around me by posting sensitive or intimate information online? Should it be freely available online, or should I try to find a publisher and make a book? Would I just expose myself and my whole tender emotional life to ridicule, judgement and rejection? When I’d start thinking this way, I just wanted to finish writing and then delete it all. Or print it and burn it. Or just keep it in one of the chests in the bedroom, perhaps to be found after my death. But then I’d remind myself that I don’t actually mind if no one ever reads this. The primary reason for this life-writing of mine is that I needed to have an honest, deep review of a difficult phase that is ending. Like a person on their death-bed seeing their life unfold as if a movie. With the added benefit that I still have a chance to change things in my life, unless the Islamic State decides that the Minimen church next door is a nest of "infidel crusaders" and bombs it today.
+For four weeks I kept a relatively regular routine. The regular rhythm was an anchor to help me stay with my life story, no matter how painful it was to have to relive it all again, or to keep on track when it all seemed irrelevant. When I wouldn’t worry about the results and just enjoyed the process of introspection, it was an emotionally healing experience. As soon as I would wonder whether it would be useful for anyone else, the doubts would arise. Who would want to read this? In what format should I present it? How is this useful? Why do I want to work on this material any more? How dare I think that my life would be worth reading about? Would I hurt people around me by posting sensitive or intimate information online? Should it be freely available online, or should I try to find a publisher and make a book? Would I just expose myself and my whole tender emotional life to ridicule, judgement and rejection? When I’d start thinking this way, I just wanted to finish writing and then delete it all. Or print it and burn it. Or just keep it in one of the chests in the bedroom, perhaps to be found after my death. But then I’d remind myself that I don’t actually mind if no one ever reads this. The primary reason for this life-writing of mine is that I needed to have an honest, deep review of a difficult phase that is ending. Like a person on their death-bed seeing their life unfold as if a movie. With the added benefit that I still have a chance to change things in my life, unless the Islamic State decides that the Minimen church next door is a nest of "infidel crusaders" and bombs it today.
 During my writing, I re-inhabited every difficult situation in the last seven years. I explored its various dimensions, until I would reach the essence of my pain, on which I would meditate until the emotions subsided and I could release that situation into the past. Let it rest in peace underneath the written words. I also experienced many beautiful moments again, peppered throughout these "difficult years". The years I’d see as a homogeneous, continuous agony when I was depressed and burnt out. As with chronic pain, there were waves of despair, moments of quiet and times for celebration. I noticed that no matter how desperate my situation was, it would usually be followed by a realisation that I could do something to improve it. This "something" tended to be some small action (like mixing a new herbal tonic), or a change of surroundings that would help me get myself out of the emotional and physical quagmire. This happened over and over again. Observing the unfolding of seven years of my life in a few weeks of writing helped me acknowledge this innate resilience. An encouraging quality to be able to count on at the moment of crossing the liminal threshold of transition. Whatever happens, I should be able to cope with it. Furthermore, my relationship with Nik should be able to cope with it. We have lived through so many ups-and-downs together, which would have made many a marriage fall apart. I am grateful for that, to both of us.
@@ Line 716: / Line 1114: @@
 <html><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2G8LAiHSCAs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></html>
-//... and let birdsong cancel out sirens... (sometimes one must be permitted a little bit of escapism...)//
 === Week 05 ===
-Continuing transcription of my diaries. It's been slow going, as there are many gaps I left unwritten while being snowed under EC audits, demanding projects, troublesome collaborations, medical disasters and emotional upheavals that lead to my depression in 2012-2013. There were times this week when I wondered why I'm doing this to myself. In order to be able to write about this period in as much rich detail as the things I've recorded in my diaries at the time, I have to dig deep into my conscious, unconscious and somatic memories. I have to bring myself to feel the way I felt then, so that I can translate the experience into words. Sometimes I truly am a fluffy gothic daughter of the Balkans, wallowing my own pathos and despair! Luckily the sun returned to Brussels this week so when I wasn't writing I was walking, happy to be in 2016 again.
+Continuing transcription of my diaries. It's been slow going, as there are many gaps I left unwritten while being snowed under EC audits, demanding projects, troublesome collaborations, medical disasters and emotional upheavals that lead to a depression in 2012-2013. There were times this week when I wondered why I'm doing this to myself. In order to be able to write about this period in as much rich detail as the things I've recorded in my diaries at the time, I have to dig deep into my conscious, unconscious and somatic memories. I have to bring myself to feel the way I felt then, so that I can translate the experience into words. Sometimes I truly am a fluffy gothic daughter of the Balkans, wallowing my own pathos and despair! Luckily the sun returned to Brussels this week so when I wasn't writing I was walking, happy to be in 2016 again.
 {{::writing-retreat-w2.png|}}
-I made two exceptions this week and made small contributions to Barbara's and Stephen's current activities. Both of them were related to what I'm currently writing about, so I didn't mind. With Stephen I edited the artist statement for the Chemo Singing Bowl. It's the first that my body has been included as the "co-artist" in an exhibition. Stephen created the beautiful  [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282454508_Diagnosing_blood_pressure_with_Acoustic_Sonification_singing_bowls|Diagnostic Singing Bowl]] (pictured above) using CAD based on my blood pressure data during chemo and bevacizumab treatments in 2009-2010. For Barbara I wrote the following testimonial of the ritual she guided for me just before my surgery last June:
+I made two exceptions this week and made small contributions to projects by [[http://beyondthespoken.eu/|Barbara Raes]] and [[https://stephenbarrass.com/2016/01/18/chemo-singing-bowl/|Stephen Barras]]. Both of them were related to what I'm currently writing about, so I didn't mind. With Stephen I edited the artist statement for the Chemo Singing Bowl. It's the first that my body has been included as the "co-artist" in an exhibition. Stephen created the beautiful  [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282454508_Diagnosing_blood_pressure_with_Acoustic_Sonification_singing_bowls|Diagnostic Singing Bowl]] (pictured above) using CAD based on my blood pressure data during chemo and bevacizumab treatments in 2009-2010. For Barbara I wrote the following testimonial of the ritual she guided for me just before my surgery last June:
 <blockquote>Vorig jaar moest ik afscheid nemen van mijn borsten, een belangrijk symbool van mijn vrouwelijkheid. Een paar dagen vóór mijn bilaterale mastectomie heeft Barbara samen met een groep krachtige vrouwen een bijzonder afscheidsritueel gehouden. Het was een geladen en ontroerende beleving waar ik er helemaal mocht zijn, met mijn gebrekkig lichaam en al mijn zorgen en verdriet. Barbara omhelsde mij bij de ingang en leidde mij door de studio waar ik dagelijks werk. "Ik ben hier voor je" zei ze "ik zal je dragen." En inderdaad, voor een uur lang voelde ik mij door de vrouwelijke oerkrachten van mijn vriendinnen gedragen, onder Barbara’s zachte begeleiding. Onze bibliotheek was omgetoverd naar een groen rustoord; in het midden van de ruimte een nest van kussens en dekens waarop ik mocht liggen. Mijn vriendinnen waren getransformeerd tot de archetypische godinnen. Hun krachten en energie hebben zij als poëtische wensen aan mij geschonken. Ze namen mij mee door een stroom van zintuigelijke ervaringen, waar mijn maelstroom van emoties zonder remmingen mocht razen, tot dat ik de serene stilte van acceptatie had bereikt. De kleuren, geuren, geluiden en strelingen brachten mij tot een alternatief bewustzijn. Mijn lichaam vloeide buiten de oevers van mijn huid, en ik zweefde gewichtsloos, opgehouden door de fluisterende stemmen en warme handen. Het ritueel eindigde in een euforisch vuurspel, opgedragen aan de zonnewende en hernieuwing voor ons allemaal. Ik voelde mijn feminiene vitaliteit ontwaken, zo omringd door mijn glimlachende, stralende zusters. Het was ongelofelijk belangrijk om op zo’n bewuste manier afscheid te nemen van een lichaamsdeel die mij veel vreugde en veel pijn heeft gebracht. Barbara’s rol als ritueel begeleidster was een onschatbare ondersteuning van mijn rouwproces. Zij heeft mij geholpen om aan mijn verlies bestaansrecht te geven. En daarmee veel ruimte voor een nieuw begin. Ik ben haar mateloos dankbaar. </blockquote>
-<html><iframe width="90%" height="150" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128534302&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true"></iframe></html>
 <blockquote>How to keep the time-wasters from taking over your life? The most important thing you have in your day is your time. How you apply and wield that time will determine the course of your life. Not to be too dramatic about it, but — yeah, that’s pretty much it. If you have three hours, how much of it are you spending on what you want to do, versus what other people want you to do? </blockquote>
@@ Line 755: / Line 1144: @@
 === Week 04 ===
-I've began transcribing diaries, editing and writing about my last seven years of living with cancer... in silence. I'm resting my vocal cords and feeling the pace decelerate. My 'lent fast' this year is a social one, I'm abstaining from people and from afflictive emotions related to people. I'm turning my gaze inward, to see what is really in there when all the social noise is removed. My days follow more or less a fixed routine. I extended the morning practice (meditation and exercises) from 20 minutes to an hour or longer. I have breakfast, I write, have lunch, rest, write, have afternoon tea, go for a walk, follow random interests wherever they take me. In the evening when I start feeling cold, I put on my headphones and dance for a while, then do anything I feel like doing. It usually involves listening to books, watching movies or meditating. Sleep comes easily and the work nightmares are lessening. I'm becoming more [[:resilients/comfortable_with_uncertainty|comfortable with uncertainty]].
+I began transcribing diaries, editing and writing about my last seven years of living with cancer... in silence. I'm resting my vocal cords and feeling the pace decelerate. My 'lent fast' this year is a social one, I'm abstaining from people and from afflictive emotions related to people. I'm turning my gaze inward, to see what is really in there when all the social noise is removed. My days follow more or less a fixed routine. I extended the morning practice (meditation and exercises) from 20 minutes to an hour or longer. I have breakfast, I write, have lunch, rest, write, have afternoon tea, go for a walk, follow random interests wherever they take me. In the evening when I start feeling cold I put on my headphones and dance for a while, then do anything I feel like doing. It usually involves listening to books, watching movies or meditating. Sleep comes easily and the work nightmares are lessening. I'm becoming more [[:resilients/comfortable_with_uncertainty|comfortable with uncertainty]].
 {{::writing-retreat-w1.png|}}
@@ Line 808: / Line 1197: @@
 {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/24714205073/}}\
-Celebrating with [[https://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/25314343986/|delectable tastes]] of [[http://airdutemps.be/|Air du Temps]]... Until we get rudely brought back to reality by Stevie's urgent texts and voice messages demanding that we find her power supply. Back in Brussels, taking down the Stillness exhibition, being annoyed by worldly demands, printing and sending the yearly report, paying bills and updating the website. Ritually cleaning the blackboard and pulling down the shutter of the admin closet.
+Celebrating with [[https://www.flickr.com/photos/zzkt/25314343986/|delectable tastes]] of [[http://airdutemps.be/|Air du Temps]]... Until we get abruptly brought back to reality by urgent texts and voice messages demanding that we find one of FoAM's artists' power supply. It seems like even for people closest to us it's still unclear that a fallow year means that the core team will not be taking care of daily management at FoAM.
+Back in Brussels, taking down the Stillness exhibition, printing and sending the yearly report, paying bills and updating the website. Ritually cleaning the blackboard and pulling down the shutter of the admin closet.
 Nik departs to Australia.
-On Monday 29/02/2016 at 17h I finally close the FoAM door behind me and begin my writing retreat and social fast for a month. A month of being on my own, without having to take anyone else's wishes and needs into account. Just thinking about it the weight begins dropping off my shoulders... As I come home, I'm greeted with direct sunshine on the wall (for the first time since October), refracted through a crystal into dozens of tiny rainbows... Good sign!
+On Monday 29/02/2016 at 17h I finally close the FoAM door behind me and begin my writing retreat and social fast for a month. A month of being on my own, without having to take anyone else's wishes and needs into account. Just thinking about it the weight begins dropping off my shoulders...
+As I come home, I'm greeted with direct sunshine on the wall (for the first time since October), refracted through a crystal into dozens of tiny rainbows...
 === Week 02 ===
-Day one: CGF evaluation notes online, emptying the mailbox, meeting Luea, working on the newsletter. Again too tired to go out in the evening to see Rasa & Pieter's event at Q-O2. Hmm... At least the hours of daylight are getting visibly longer...
+Day one: [[marine_colab/reflection_meeting|CGF evaluation notes]] online, emptying my inbox, meeting [[http://shifts.be/|Luea]], working on the newsletter. Again too tired to go out in the evening to see Rasa & Pieter's event at Q-O2.
-I'd like to make my own tree of contemplative practices: http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree
+At least the hours of daylight are getting visibly longer...
 The rest of the week: gradually working down my to-do list. Finishing the yearly report and the [[https://tinyletter.com/_foam/letters/foam-digest-winter-02016|winter digest]]. With every item that I cross off, a I feel small atoms of space and lightness spreading in my head...
+I wonder, what would my own [[http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree|tree of contemplative practices]] look like?
 === Week 01 ===
@@ Line 828: / Line 1223: @@
   * Day three: total collapse and a marathon of period dramas, instead of a planned visit to Artefact...
   * Day four: back to work - tying loose ends, making to-do lists and automatic reply messages, designing the [[http://fo.am/macrotransiency-foam-bxl/|transiency page]], writing text for the newsletter, hearing about pre-advices for other structurally funded organisations (and irrationally having second thoughts regarding our decision not to apply)... Walking home feeling that we're moving one step forward, one and 1/2 step back...
-  * Day five: finalising the VG report, paying bills, CGF finances, jaarrekening and then apero. Sounds like the same old Friday...
+  * Day five: finalising the funding report for the Flemish Authorities, paying bills, sorting out finances for Marine CoLAB and closing FoAM's financial year 2015 and then apero. Sounds like the same old Friday...
-  * Day six & seven: codeine+nurofen assisted rest; sleep, eat, stare at screens (more period dramas); some positive thoughts start bubbling again with ideas for the march retreat and a long futuring process for FoAM in the spring, dispersed with deep-set fears about (financial) insecurity (which I can 'meditate' away, sometimes)
+  * Day six & seven: codeine+nurofen assisted rest; sleep, eat, stare at screens (more period dramas); some positive thoughts start bubbling again with ideas for my writing retreat and a long futuring process for FoAM in the spring, dispersed with deep-set fears about (financial) insecurity (which I can 'meditate' away, sometimes)