Mar(k)ing Time
100 days until my 40th Birthday
19 October 2018
Friday.
Black
Ponderosa, a Dance community outside Berlin.
Mar(k)in Time is a personal project I am initiating to count down the last 100 days of my 40th year.
I turn 40 on the 27th of January 2019, but I have been living inside my 40th year for many months now and the idea of being 40 has already started to settle. I have been trying to figure out how to celebrate and although 40 day and 40 night solo journey in the desert sounded very appealing I wasnt sure that I would be able to square that with parenting or with work. I realized that journey or not, party or not, I wanted to begin some kind of ritual practice. One that especially would help me balance my relationship with time.
Ma(r)king time addresses my relationship to time, in very banal as well as larger ways.
Some of the practices that I am beginning are:
making specific plans about the things that I will do in a day and when I will do them.
– for many people a thing like this is second nature. Not for me. I am not schedule bound. I am an extremely flexible person, very adaptable, perhaps because I moved so much as a child. I dont know how my mother managed to provide such grounded feelings for me at the same time putting me through so much constant change. I feel that nothing happens to me on a regular basis, even brushing my teeth daily is a struggle. If I cant have consistency in what I do each day, at least I can have the consistent act of deciding what will be done.
I stress around time a lot. Like many, and in my own unique way I struggle with how to integrate all the information constantly pouring into my head from my Smartphone. I dislike the way that it constantly has me, that I have it in hand almost every second of the day and that I feel compelled to answer every message that comes to me through its medium.
Im wearing one color for ten days at a time. The order of colors will be:
1.black
2.green
3.pink
4.blue
5.red
6.yellow
7.white
8.purple
9.orange
10.brown/earth/flesh
Wearing one color at a time focuses my attention on the act of preparing for the day. Living in a place without a shower and thus needing slightly more time to heat water and do the practice of pouring water, and living always in such a rush, not to mention having difficulty keeping schedule, concentrating on one color and one feeling for each day is extremely helpful to my practice.
Im journaling each day in a committed way.
Im reaching out to my Sister-Elders; my aunts and my mother and grandmother for some advice and wisdom about practices they have around time. Asking them about their relationship to ageing, to time, and ideas they may have for me to integrate into my daily practice.