Jumping in half-way through the month with “Reverb10” – writing/reflection prompts for reviewing the year and looking ahead (perhaps it will be combined with starting/finishing The Sketchbook — which is currently BLANK).

Dec. 19 PROMPT — What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

Not sure. Honestly not sure. My relationship with my sister resumed after a nine year break – that’s a healing. It was very sudden in the sense that it was precipitated by her trip to an ER. But it was slow in that she was kept sedated and on full ventilation for almost two months, and could barely speak when they finally trached her… So we had a chance to be in each other’s presence without any attempts at conversation, which was followed by brief whispers and writing on a tablet (for her) and talking on my part.  Gradually, then, coming back into relationship.

Part of being in touch with her was the hauling out of a basket that has been empty for a long time — tossing in references to family; reminiscences; theories about who did what to whom.  My brother lives on the West Coast and my parents have been dead for a long time.

But that wasn’t the healing (for me)…. it was noticing that the story doesn’t matter all that much to me anymore.  Very little of it has any charge at all.

Which is part of what made me want to take journal excerpts (like the above) and use them in a few pieces.  Diary words purely as movement across the fabric — and not as a telling, revealing, or unburdening.

That felt pretty brand new.

For 2011, I would like to spend more time “in” my body by dancing, and who knows, maybe even running.  Dancing is always healing.  At any time.  In any place.  To most any music.