‘memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather’
John O’Donohue

Here are a few vanished days that have made their way back into recent memory/experience –

I have 3 new videos to share with everyone. Two of the installations that I created during my residency in Finland, and one from my Icelandic adventure.
Experiences that seem so far away now – yet somehow they are still close by – Enjoy!

Haukijärvi Finland

Grindavik Iceland

It’s not just the end of the year, it’s the end of a decade.
I find myself more reflective than usual –
it has been a decade where life and death, transition and transformation, sorrow and surrender have touched me intimately, deeply –
it has been challenging on many levels, emotionally, physically, spiritually
I have been here before –
Recently I found something that I wrote after the death of my father 20 years ago, one of several people I lost in that year alone –
I had retreated to Northern Saskatchewan, gone home to heal –
I was struck by the similarity of sentiment and situation that I find myself in now –

I thought I would share it :

“I have come home. To a place that I recognize and one that recognizes me –
A geographical place, located somehow inside myself.
It is a place of beauty, of grace, and of quiet endurance.

I have come home. Returned to the source – Okori –
a place where being makes room for dreaming the becoming.

I have come to this place to rest, to recover, to refuel. A place where the only distractions are internal, my mind going over the events of my life – specifically this last year, the last of the century, of the millennium-
A time of reflection – of pause –
A time for shedding, incubation, hibernation
There’s definitely a feeling of going in – inside the seeing –
revisiting ideas, getting clear, getting focused, stepping back to watch the mystery unfold –

I feel my body relaxing into the silence of the falling snow – the kind of silence my mind has difficulty surrendering to – the silence of my seeing

I have come home, to a place I recognize and one that recognizes me,
a geographical place located somehow inside myself,
a place of beauty, of grace and of quiet endurance.
The silence soothes the sorrowful soul of my being.
I drink from this place for the journey ahead.”
December 1999

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Here’s to the year ahead and the decade still to come –
Let it be filled with the best of all things, always, in all ways
may peace prevail above all else

I leave you with Rumi reminding us of who we are

We are stars wrapped in skin – the light you seek has always been within

Peace
Louise Pagé
Okori
December 2019