It is a blessing experience, to finally find out where I belong.
Living at close contact with nature, doing arts and sharing the process with other artists -as well as with a vibrant local community…I finally found my World, and I am deeply grateful for it. It is a wonderful magical one, and it is the one for me.
As I got more and more conscious about this deep, profound homecoming process in the last days, I found myself looking back at my past, and connecting the dots that brought me here, now.
Finally it was time to make some sense out of them. Now I know, they bring somewhere good, that I can tell a story with an happy ending about myself. And inside that conclusion, a new start is stretching and waking up, and it is a brand new life.
In this new life, there is future. I imagine getting old, following the path that starts now, and who knows where it will bring me…
Maybe an answer can be found in the poem “Letter to an older self”, that came to me on Cascade Head, last week.
Here at Sitka, spring can be felt in the air. Male elks -our local maned deer- are starting to fight, and I hear more and more songbirds warming up. The trees smell different, the air smells different and somehow…vibrates. Daffodils and buds are blooming everywhere. I saw my first bat of the year coming back home from the estuary, flying around and feeding in the darkening evening sky.
The weather has been wonderful in the last few days, allowing a kayak trip and wonderful walks. With lovely resident Ingrid Erickson (here you can fine more about her fantastic cut-paper naturalist work) we went exploring the ocean beach across the estuary. Most pictures of this post come from there, and from the estuary seen by the water. Harbor seals were popping out all around us, curious creatures as they are. It was real magic to meet them on their element, under such an open sky.
My outreach work to the local community continued, and I scheduled my first concert and workshops for the children of the Neskowin Valley School, for March 16th and 18th.
I am now in touch with the Panther Creek Senior and Community Centre, and I just made arrangements to join them with my cello during their monthly community breakfast on March 1st.
And it seems like that Tom – my cello – has now got his seat on the planes to Mexico! We will leave from Vancouver, BC on April 22, and fly to Mexico City. The return trip to Vancouver will be in mid June. The NewWorlds Project is taking more and more shape!
As I write now, it is one month since I arrived at Sitka. Since then many things have happened, and the year has kept turning on his wheel. As the season is starting to change, I realize how much changing has happened inside.
It is a time of renovation, and of letting go. It is a time when the ocean air can cleanse us, and the wind can bring unexpected news. It is time for listening and support new ideas into life and light.
For me, it has also been time for telling my story. I did it one night, without planning, one cup of herbal tea after the other, until all I had to say was written down on the pages of a wonderful, hand-bonded notebook my friend artist Barbara Putnam made for me.
My story, the one of me and my cello, and of the life in between… 13 years of life. So much happened.
I had to put it down, as we are now entering a new chapter. I have been trying on different lives through the years: I have been all kinds of student, school, music private student, a conservatory student, an university student, an Erasmus student, and a cello master student, a youth orchestra player, a first cello, a professional orchestra player, a teacher, a chamber music performer, a solo performer, an improviser, a singer, a composer, an out-reacher, a traveler, a human being dealing with friendship, illness, death and love, sometimes the healer, sometimes the one who deeply needed to be healed.
Music was always there, changing with me, as I made my way forward. And that way, I feel it clearly, was bringing me here.
Here is: I am an artist. I create, and share. World is home to me.
This is my story so far.
