Past, present, and future are connected when we listen. How do we get ready to meet the past, dressed as the future? Soften. Prepare.

My son’s shabe yalda poster. Somehow inspired by the Puerto Rican flag!

While I inch along with my creative community building projects, I am thinking of creativity in a new way. Maybe it’s an old way. The oldest way, possibly. Creative as in sustaining life.

This winter, I feel I am being called into preparation Though I’m not exactly sure what will happen. I am being called to listen for ways to prepare. To pay attention to and re-acquaint myself with what I already know, especially that which I’ve discarded or pushed under the rug. I’m engaging with textiles and the stories they hold and I’m leaning into “folds and folding” as a metaphor.

Folds hold what we don’t want to look at as well as what we are searching for.

Folds call us into a practice of preparedness, setting the ground, being ready.

Readying through folding and practices of folding textiles ask us to see ahead, to anticipate a future interaction/response/engagement.

What are you listening for this winter? How are you readying the ground for life to thrive?

I’d love for you to listen to this short piece on Eva Yaa Asantewa’s meditative podcast, Body and Soul.

“Kayhan Irani--writer, performer, artivist, mother–finds herself  aswirl in a constellation of stories, savoring books by writers of color whose values point the way to a positive future.