Security

Started: 4 January 2025
Offered: 8 February 2025

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How do the clothes you’re wearing fit? How do they make you feel? Can you see specific colors or textures?

What can you see happening immediately after waking up? And even before that, what time are you waking up? What is waking you up? The sun? A noise? Someone’s touch?

What does a weekday look like? What can you see about the space you’re working in? How do you get there? Do you walk? Bike? run? Drive? Receive a ride? What can you see from where you’re working?

In February/March 2022, S and I spent a few days in Mendocino.

One morning, we took turns asking each other these questions. The person asking took notes and when the moment called for it, asked follow-up questions.

The person responding faced the ocean, seated, in a high-backed whicker chair.

Each turn ended when it felt like we were empty and the page full. About 45 minutes for both of us.

Some of what came out was specific. Some was gestural.

Tonight, ~3 years later, I am looking back on these notes, still in the list we recorded them in.

I’m moved by how current, close, and clear the voice who spoke these words sounds.

“45 minutes and a few questions produced a “sound” that’s resonating 3 years later.”

This is what I instinctively thought when reflecting on this experience.

Although, running that statement back through me, I realized its omission of the illegible parts.

The subtle moments, layered over time, that helped us each to feel sufficiently safe and inspired to speak in a voice we weren’t yet practiced with.

I think Kevin Lynch put this all well when he said (1976):

It is when local time, local place, and our own selves are secure that we are ready to face challenge, complexity, vast space, and the enormous future.