This weekend was the Freewheeling - future thinking Festival in Stanford.  It is a festival that encourages you to go over the edge - and try new things.  A huge focus of the festival is on green issues.  My venturing there was to explore my creative self more - through a performance of storytelling, and some of the poems that I intend to publish this year.  I firmly believe that creativity is an importantly green issue!!!!  Being there was challenging and affirming.  For me, given that it was also the first time away from my baby and the family since he was born, the most amazing thing was the time to sit and just to be... and the wonderful conversations I had with Sara, Mokgetsi, Mbali, Pat and Balu - all of whom are involved in working with creative process with people - director, art-therapist/actress, actress/poet, therapist/dance teacher, and dancer/designer/teacher.  There is a great potential for collaboration and we are going to persue this further.

For me it was the first time i performed after many years - and it was really part performance, part reading.  I thoroughly enjoyed performing again - connecting with the energy of the audience and telling a story that is important to me.  The response was good - encouraging - and I know that this process feeds me and enables me to be more bodaciously me. 

It was great to lead into the dance production Raw, which I was going to be part of but couldn't, so in a way I felt like I was part... Raw was a group of women, who are not professional dancers, put together by Balu, and telling their stories through dance.  They have all been part of Balu's programme, Moving Art, which is an exploration of self through movement and other creative modalities.  I did the moving art programme last year when I was pregnant and it was just what I needed - to be doing something creative in the outer world, and I created life within. 

An insight - or is it a remembering - that I have had recently is how creative process centres me and enables me to make sense of my life in a more profound way that just thinking about it.