through art and travel . . .

As a creator, of art and experiences . . . having the deep need to wander foreign lands, gather and to create. Alone in silence is where I find my roots. Experiencing my thoughts, beliefs and behaviours - the expectations I place on others that come from these unexamined limiting places I inherited from my culture, my family and the collective humanity in which we all reside. I thought I had been living an examined life, but as I sit alone, I witness what lies beneath, all of it, my unconscious lens from which I view everything and everybody . . . my assumptions and expectations that blindly gage all that cross my path. I am not special, this is the human experience, often busy, and distracted with the life that we mostly create, we are unaware how everything we see and do, everywhere we go, every adventure or interaction is seen through our unexamined lens of what came before. . .

When I arrived here in Morocco, my life was filled with camels, couscous and the revamping of a kasbah in the Sahara. Busy basking in all the newness and otherworldliness of it all, with Kamal at my side we consciously set to build a life together to gather others in the Sandcastle. As I look back and witness myself and the way of this unfolding, everything different, basic and primitive. I misplaced my compass, I write this with compassion to myself, I surely am not the first westerner to loose myself in the shifting sands of the Sahara, another culture, another world and others ways of being. With this pause I have come to know that while the dream is beautiful, our hearts wide open, the places that we reside deep inside create our own personal reality. Even when we have a common language, the meaning, our experiences are vastly different. As different as these humans were to me, I am humbled to realize how different I am to them . . . our preconceived ideas of other and the way we understand and experience our freedoms. Expectation of what it means to be taken care of, to be a woman and the way we do life - are all subjective and we attach all of our experiences, our stories and our unconscious limiting beliefs to everything.

I am grateful for my time in Marrakech, having time to excavate and examine me. . . like art the only way forward is through. I know in my heart what is meant to be will be, trusting the journey - navigating and examine our differences, our inherited beliefs so we can move forward in our sameness. Letting go of our exceptions of other, doing things our way, even if unconsciously implied. To love and accept others truly is only possible when can love and accept ourselves.

Like art, our lives are often messy, and ungrounded, there is no right way, no bad work, instead a series of different expressions that we try on for a time.

Inshallah

michelle x