Sweet Susan with her Soul Bundles…
I met Susan by following my instinct and reacting to my gut, saying yes when my body was vibrating in vulnerability. I’ve been having many conversations about fear, with myself, with others. Recently, I was talking to a close friend on the phone about fear. We were talking in the language of what I lovingly call ‘Whoo Whoo’, New Age speak that spans millennia, picking and choosing its mystic influences as it goes along. This friend and I were referring to our Throat Chakra and how when it tightened up or our Heart Chakra when it started thumping away, that was the time in which we compelled ourselves to speak and act. Those fight or flight symptoms were the very signifiers for he and I, to step forward and speak up instead of giving into primal temptation to turn around and run in the other direction.
The Nature Of Refuge is in its heart, a project about fear. I am asking broad brush stroke questions about extreme vulnerability, what do we do when we feel weak? How do we react to others fragility? I was compelled to create this work and go on this epic journey in the exploration of all the different ways women in this country will answer those questions because I had a profound experience with feeling helpless in my fear. I had no alternative but to look my fear square on and surrender to it finally, integrate it somehow, or I wasn’t going to make it. Well, I made it. I am still everyday redefining my relationship with my fear and embarking on this project is an awesome teacher, I am learning to love my interaction with my fears through the practical and mystical mechanizations of this work with these women.
I think we are all scared, to our bones afraid. Its death of course that we were biologically primed to react as the ultimate Boogyman, everyday we dance with this fear. But with our gorgeous imaginations we have also created a myriad of equally gorgeous monsters that we grapple with daily, we are incredible in our insanity, most of all how we collectively pretend that that isn’t what we are doing day in day out. Fighting our fears, always, all the time.
What I am interested in here and really with every motivating force in my existence, is how to I turn the fight into a flow. A graceful interaction with my whole self, one without self recrimination and that doesn’t exhaust me through futile flailing about. So in my learning curve, I am endlessly curious in how others are going about their relationship with fear, this is why I ask these questions; to create a space where we can teach each other about grace in fear.
Then, we can change the world. Because we are together in this.
When I was out at Joshua Tree National park a couple weeks ago, I had a time period where my fear felt very strong, quite tangible. The minute I hit the Mojave I was impacted with overwhelming sensation, foundations started trembling immediately.
Each morning I would wake up with breathlessness in all that quiet, deep, stripped down beauty. The bones of the earth are sharply outlined in the desert and there’s not much to cushion to any fall. I was sharply outlined out there as well, I resonate high all the time, always have but especially now in these last few years. I had another friend recently say that this is when you look away and have a shot of whiskey to shut it down, and I replied that I hadn’t hadn’t had a drink of whiskey in 13 years and I couldn’t help it, I had to stare into the sun. The desert discerned my frequency upon arrival and turned it way up, and though it rattled me, I stayed put and listened.
What does this all have to do with meeting Susan Hough? Well, she was in the campground next to mine in the sweetest camping spot in Joshua Tree National Park, Belle Campground aptly named. I kept on being pulled back to that lovely little pile of outer-space looking rocks and sweet nooks and crannies for setting up camp. I was testing out the other campgrounds but also jumping around so I didn’t have to pay the extra camp fees – I’m a hooligan still to this day – and Belle just is the kindest and most calm area of the park in my opinion. Susan and I first exchanged hellos when she saw my Washington plates on my truck, She grew up in Washington as well so we commiserated on that for a second, then Susan walked on with a smile and a wave. The next time I saw Susan was a some days later through my driver side window as I was leaving the campground for the last time, I passed her by with a wave, nice lady I thought. I looked back again and saw her in my rear view mirror drinking her morning coffee by her RV and she just had a shine around her.
“Stop Sara Brown, and go back and talk to her!”
This is what my Throat Chakra called out and what my Heart Chakra thumped along in time with. It churns up a beautiful anxiety inside me when I walk up to a complete stranger and say, “Hey, how are you? My name is Sara Brown and I’m doing this project called The Nature Of Refuge and I’d love to interview you if you don’t mind…” I’m getting easier with the different ways this is manifesting but I think it will always be a moment of shit or get off the pot, It’s exciting.
I turned around my truck and went back to Susan’s RV. She wasn’t in sight anymore so I called out hello and knocked lightly on her door. Susan opened it with a smile and as I fumbled about with my introduction – I am getting smoother each time which is great – she immediately invited me inside to hear more; gracious, curious, putting me at my ease from the start. Susan’s husband was stretched out of a lovely comfortable looking bed, it was all organized and golden with a sense of spaciousness inside. Beautiful objects along with all the practical RV stuff lay side by side in an elegant flow, Susan and her partner had made a wonderful sanctuary to travel around the country in. Susan asked her husband to have some privacy and was easily given it, her and I sat down and we began to speak and in five minutes we were recording and in depth into the interview process.
Just like that.
Please enjoy the full length interview with Susan at http://vimeo.com/249124150
Susan is an artist, she makes these self contained alters that she calls Soul Bundles out of felt and found objects, they are as special and unique as their creator. Susan is wise and eloquent and thoughtful in all her words. I love her cadence and the care she puts in expressing herself. Susan is strong and very aware of the power of vulnerability. She is a maverick from the background she came out of, she left the confines of what American culture dictates a woman in her late 60’s to be. Susan grew up expecting herself to fit in with the rigid outlines of wife and mother and objectified femininity and then she abruptly left those expectations behind. Susan is brave and I see her ownership of herself so clearly where Susan let it slip, that she feels like she still has no clue who she is. That’s what I mean about fear and how we are all steeped in it and dance with it or fight it all the time, every day. Susan, so centered in her life adventure, feels her old fears acutely still, they are still her companions.
We are all the same, we all dance and fight with these shadow puppets and we all are trying in our various ways to find the doorway out before we exhaust ourselves.
This is the nature of refuge.
