Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

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©Katherine Dunn.





Saturday, January 14, 2012

Floating to heal



It seems so many have lost their way from nature and earth. One does not need to live in the country either to be connected to the natural world on a daily basis. Having said that, just because one lives in the country doesn't mean they act in partnership with nature.

While I have never lost touch with nature, I have felt internal urgings of late to place myself in very specific places here on my farm. One place that keeps coming into my internal movie - commonly called my head or inner vision - is the large Savannah Oak on top of Donkey Hill. This is a magical, powerful place for me. From it's vantage point, the farm floats. I rarely come right out and tell people the farm floats, but it does. It's not a secret, it's just an experience I savor for myself and translate only in color layers in paintings.

I too have been known to float, another experience I have shared with only a few close, understanding people. I have been doing it since I was a child. My first memory of floating off was when I would take a bath, and even though my body was still there, I was somewhere else, just...floating. Not flying, not doing anything, just resonating and floating. I never told anyone for years about floating, and sensed it was not "normal". But I liked it, a lot.

But I began to understand through fellow floaters that I am here on Earth, now, to be a a spirit in a human body, not the other way around. My time here has meaning, and if I am going to float, it should be put to good use. Floating to regain composure in angst or sadness is positive. But to float away to escape is not something I aspire to anymore.

You would think that on a farm, 100% of my interactions are with nature. But like all of you, I am faced with finding balance as a farmer-artist-writer-wife-daughter-friend-worker bee-blogger-marketer...and soul.

I spend a lot of time laying my hands on my animals. What a beautiful, meaningful life I am living. But I am having real urges to spend more time with the Savannah Oak this year. I want to press my back on her waist, letting her arms wrap me and her leaf hands lay on me, healing me.