This was a turning point for me, there is nothing super significant in what I did this week, other than I left the house. For the past few weeks, I had been stuck at home, operating in a 5′ x 7′ space. This week I walked. I took my phone with me and snapped some photos, I took a bag with me and collected things: acorns, needles, mushroom spores, pokeberries, madder root. I walked and I saw, and I stopped, and I collected, and I met people. Mostly still through zoom, but it was a week of engaging calls: DESIS, Design Justice Network Vancouver, I keep encountering another Emily Carr student named Morgan on all of these zoom calls I am attending. I made it to Mimi Gellman’s Braiding Sweetgrass book club, I attended Leslie-Ann Noel’s guest lecture in Dimeji Onafuwa’s class on the pluralverse. I started to feel connected again and that I was on the right track. Oh, and I got mail, Jenna’s zine series – Atrocities Against Indigenous Canadians arrived, I ordered the whole series again because I had given away all the zines I ordered last time. I have to remember to get out and walk more. I also met Sharon Kallis from EartHand gardens. She was attending Mimi’s book club too and described the Means of Production Garden. By her description, I was pretty sure I knew which one she meant. So the next day I went to check out the garden at China Creek Park near the school. It was great I met another Emily Carr student as well, Naomi. Sharon has great energy and was really receptive to my questions and inquiries. I explained that I was trying to understand colonization and decolonization by working with flax, she didn’t bat an eye. It turns out she works with flax, hemp, nettles and more, spinning, weaving and knitting with them. She also grows the materials for fabric and natural dying in the community garden. I stumbled upon a group of people already doing the kind of work I wanted to be involved in.
Reminder to self
When you are feeling stuck, just get up and go out for a walk. Pick up the phone and call or text someone. Or walk to a friends house just to say hello. The world will open up, and you will have positioned yourself where you need to be to see the opportunities. Also, Lesley-Ann Noel had so much to share. Go look up more of her work and lectures.
Those red mushroom look so magical. It looks like those storybook mushrooms :3