Wooing the Flow Zone: WATER meets EARTH

Getting unstuck from muck when I Don't Wanna

In my Elements System, Water is not only the tranquil fluidity of the Flow Zone. Yo, man…chill, get in the zone, relaaaaax, let it flooooow.

No.

Water is also the Domain of Mind. Its obvious bodily components are sweat, tears and the water in our fleshly sacks, but it’s also the nervous system and our thoughts.

Without firm banks, flow can become flood.

That’s not always a bad thing. Predictable and manageable flooding can produce some of the most fertile lands imaginable. Just look at the Nile.

Wait, you don’t know how flooding creates the fertility of the Nile River? Here, oooh-shiny nerd-out moment. 🤩 Even if you do know about this wonder of the world, it’s so pretty!

Naturally, when flooding is unexpected and violent, if it comes in too great a volume, it can sweep away and destroy really valuable things. Afterwards, when all that water can’t continue on or dry out quickly enough, flooding becomes stagnation, rot, mold, yuck.

This is why all the foundation work we do in the Earth Element is so crucial by the time we make it downstream to Water. (Earth is the first element in the cycle; Water is the fourth out of five.) If we haven’t put in the work of building strength, alignment, grounding, with both the stick-to-it-ness of stone and oak, as well as the flexibility of willow or bamboo, the other Elements can wreak havoc on our stability.

Without a proper foundation for balance, Air is too risky and Metal is too forceful. The passion and emotion of Fire can too easily burn everything down.

Granted, just like with the flooding of the Nile, the ravages of a wildfire are not necessarily a bad thing. It’s necessary for the health of a forest.¹ But the goal is to prevent the blaze that is too big and uncontrolled. We’ll get more into controlling and surrendering to Fire later. Using the containment of stone and monitoring how much fuel we feed the fire are elemental Earth practices.

Badum-tsss.

It’s the same with Water. This overwhelming energy can too easily become—not the Flow Zone—the Flood Zone when it’s not contained by the banks. Only with proper containment can Water be channeled, navigated, directed.

This is the aspect of Water that we’re focusing on today—the river—because really, we’re still hanging out in the Earth Element.

This aspect was the ultimate determining factor of why I chose Water as the Domain of the Mind. Because the nervous system reminds me of an intricate network of flowing waterways. In developing my Elements System, I had played with using Water as the Domain of Emotion and the heart because of the way blood flows. It’s a similar concept and the two are absolutely related. Emotion can flood just as easily as thoughts. It can get dammed up and riddled with obstacles.

But in the end it was my Fire Sign’s emotional and passionate nature combined with the cerebral nature of choreography that designated Water as the Domain of Mind, since choreography involves the channeled-and-directed mental properties of choice, repetition and memorization.

When my Flow Zone is full of stones or dammed up, and especially when my life has undergone some sort of overwhelming flood that has breached my tidy banks and left me spluttering in the muck, gasping for air, trying to drag myself back onto my feet again, I have to haul out one of the heavy hitters in the Domain of Mind.

In my family, we call this “baby-steppin’.”

(And yes, this is a reference to the movie What About Bob.)²

WATER MEETS EARTH

When I’m bogged down in the squelch, I’m almost always low on Spoons.³ After a massive neurological overload that has led to collapse and can only be remedied by rest and rejuvenation, there is the danger of settling in and then getting stuck in sedentary inertia. The body at rest wants to stay there because it’s nice here, mmmmmm…yesssssss…so nice nom-nom-nom-nommmmmmmms…

NO.

I mean, yes. For restoration. For repair. But reversing flow from the sedentary, the sediment, impediment blah—this requires either an explosion to bust free, or it needs some wooing.

Being a Fire Sign, sometimes I like igniting the thrusters and blasting back into action.

After the ass-kicking I’ve had since November, I have had no fuel for any type of launch. I haven’t even had any kindling around for a nice little fire to light under my butt. I’ve just been trying to drag my splattered carcass out of the ravaged flood plain. All my waterways are dammed up and full of boulders. Nothing is flowing right.

And yet, there are all these things I really want to do. Heaven help me when something comes along that I need to do and Hashtag Don’tWanna.

Baby-steppin’ is my remedy for this.

First steps: I clear out as many obstacles that stand between me and this BIG THING I need or want to do. Sometimes all I can manage is one teensy step.

I undo my hair from the braid or ponytail. One less thing to do before getting into the shower. (Yes. For Spoonies, even a stupid shower can be a daunting project.) If it’s a really bad neuro day, undoing the hair might be all I manage on the showering project until the next morning. I might crash out for three more hours, get up, be useless, and go back to the silence and dark, doing a nice rendition of a corpse until the next day so I can get rid of the migraine.

Shrug.

Oh-fucking-well.

If I’m that crashed out, I pretty much wake up in exactly the same position I went to sleep in, so my un-corralled hair will be less tangled now, won’t it? Bonus: not having the hair pulled into a ponytail will reduce skull-pressure.

We’ll take the wins.

HOW I GOT BACK TO MY MONSTROUS DANCE PROJECT AFTER HAVING MY ASS KICKED

August 12, 2023
3: 33 p.m.

Yesterday’s project was massive. I’ve been putting it off for weeks because I had too much to deal with between government entities, lawyers, disability agencies, doctors, orthodontists, and on top of that I had out-of-state guests. Woot!

But big fun still devours Spoons, even as it gives some back, so I needed to recover after my friends went home.

Then out of nowhere, the Muse poked me. I’ve been waiting for that poke. The moment, I felt it, I acted. You have to act! That’s one of the keys. If I stall, if I delay, if I wait…mmmm…super likely that I’ll use up my Spoons on something else or I’ll sink back into sediment.

So when I heard it, I perked.

Muse: Hey. Hey. Yo. You have those ballet shoes now to keep your overheated feet from sticking to the green screen puzzle mats and peeling up the corners, there to grab your pinky toes and threaten to break them the second you start sweating. Those shoes totally work so…you could do the first green screen trials. Iff’n you wanted to… wink-wink, nudge-nudge

Me: cracking open one eyeball. Huh. I could.

Muse: Ya knooooow… you also need to do Auri’s next round of costume trials now that her raggy-dresses are distressed.

Me: Truth.

Muse: And you also need to do her second makeup trials since those doll-eyes were such a ghastly fail. You could do all three at once if you reeeeally wanted to.

Me: now with both eyeballs open, scanning back and forth as I take a body/brain scan and collate data. I…huh. Yeah, I totally could. That would be extraordinarily efficient.

Muse: We like efficient. It conserves Spoons.

Me: It totally does! It also gets things done more quickly.

Muse: Way more quickly. C’mon…you know you want to. It’ll make ya feel good…good…good…

Yes. Sometimes when my Muse tries to lure me into playing, She sounds an awful lot like that 80s anti-drug campaign commercial. But she really is my Craic dealer so…

So I did not hesitate. I beelined downstairs and grabbed the stack of green screen foamy puzzle mats from where I’d stashed them while I had company, then took stock of every single tiny thing I would need to do in order to be ready to do those trials.

Here’s the key: I promised myself that all we were doing that day was clearing rocks out of the river and getting the boat unstuck, not fully launching it. If we didn’t get to the actual filming, no biggie. That wasn’t the goal. If it happened, bonus.

Know what happened?

I wound up doing the first green screen trial. What I filmed: Auri’s next round of costume trials to see how her new raggy-dresses moved and flowed, so that I would know if they were going to work or I’d have to go back to the drawing board and either overhaul or tweak.

I decided NOT to do makeup trials. Instead, I chose to use up my limited Spoon allotment getting this really crucial piece started. Because working with green screen could totally alter the way I need to do makeup anyway, so it was the more efficient and logical choice.

This is how I dragged my limbs out of the squelching, sucking muck and carved another two chunks off my Kingkiller Dance To Do List. One teensy step, followed by another and a body check-in to see if I could keep going:

• Baby-steppin’ bring the puzzle mats back upstairs.

• Baby-steppin’ snap the mats back together.

• Baby-steppin’ unfurl the ginormous green screen backdrop and hang it across the whole studio. (I sewed together and ironed the whole thing weeks ago, then hung it on the far corner of the frame the last time I baby-stepped toward this endeavor.)

• Baby-steppin’ tighten the elastic on the ballet slippers.

• Baby-steppin’ research if those huge wrinkles and shadows in the backdrop will show up in—

Curses. They will.

• Baby-steppin’ grab piles of huge books to tack the backdrop down and keep it smooth.

• Baby-steppin’ set up the camera and look like a jackass, raising arms overhead, walking forward and seeing how much of my body is in the frame—

Curses.

• Baby-stappin’ start all over on the other side of the flippin’ couch because this whole-room setup is completely different from from a 10 X 12 backdrop and an area rug.

Swear some more. Very important.

Do you know about the endurance power of swearing? It’s like biological, neurological magic.⁴

• Baby-steppin’ drag the punching bag into the front entryway, drag the computer stand to the other side of the couch, bring a bunch of shit downstairs because it’s in mah way.

• Baby-steppin’ do more asshat camera trials.

Make some coffee because now the Flow Zone momentum has struck and we’re doing this shit. We’re no longer baby-steppin’. Now we’re striding. Dare I say leaping? 🔥🤘😈🖕🔥

• Put on the first costume.

• Look at face in the mirror. Analyze time consumption to put on makeup. Analyze Spoons. Scrap the idea of full makeup trials.

• Slap some ratass makeup on so we don’t look hideous on camera. (We do NOT battle the inner popcorn-throwing-gallery of childhood voices sneering how ugly we are when we do video trials of anything except backdrop functionality. If I’ll be analyzing how *I* look on camera, NO. That is simply a waste of Spoons. Popcorn munchers are not welcome in this sacred artistic space.)

• (That kind of self-care and self-protective boundaries against the monsters in my mind: that’s all Earth Meets Metal, baybeee.)

• Polish off the coffee through a straw because…lipstick.

• Push Record on the video camera, push Play on the music, and dance.

BOOM.

First green screen trials and Auri’s 3rd costume trials: ACHIEVED.

Since the green screen studio was already up, this momentum rolled straight into finalizing Devi’s magical-elemental butt-spanking costumes, Felurian’s first silver catsuit trials, and figuring out the Denna With Ambrose getup. (Because Devi stole one of her skirts so I had to start from scratch. Again.)

Mega Triumph.

Gallery of Proof.

I USE THIS ALL THE TIME FOR EVERYTHING

Because I am chronically short on Spoons and have memory, executive function, and sequencing issues. For example:

• Baby-steppin’ sort the dirty laundry. That’s all. You don’t have to actually—oh. Okay. I guess we’re doing this. (85% of the time, sorting leads to throwing a load in the washer right away.)

• Baby-steppin’ wad up the car cover tighter and smash it into the corner of the entryway. Do NOT put it back on the car so there’s one less chore to do this afternoon because you really wanna go on a hike before winter hits, but going to that nifty spot will require The Dreaded Driving. Now at least, there’s no wrestling match with the car cover. This boulder-clearing often lures me outside.

• Baby-steppin’ pull up the video of that butt & leg workout and leave it open on the internet browser so every moment you navigate around the tabs while you’re sitting on your keister, it stares at you. Luring. Poking. Hey. Hey. Yo. It’s already up. You just have push PLAY and let the swearing—I mean, the sweating begin.

• Baby-steppin’ weed and de-clutter the monstrous collection of photos/videos in your computer for only 5 minutes. That’s it. 5 minutes. (Once I get started, 5 minutes usually multiplies. They’re kinda like bunnies that way.)

FFS. Sometimes it really does require breaking things down into each tiny step and fooling the mind with promises of, “Seriously. You only have to do this one tiny thing. Not that whole ginormous project. You are NOT doing a Project-with-a-Capital-P today. You’re just clearing a few little obstacles out of the way so that when it’s time to do the project, you’ll—”

OH.

I guess we’re doing the project today.

Inertia.

Momentum.

Flow Zone.

When Water meets too much Earth, or when Earth’s solid foundation gets flooded by too much Water: baby-step it.

© 2023 Hartebeast

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1. More nerding out: Earth Meets Fire

• Misconceptions and benefits of wildfire

• Nerdier still: why certain naturally occurring wildfires are necessary

2. Baby-Steppin’ Bob

• Baby Steps by Jordan Peterson vs. Dr. Leo Marvin while working with Bob Wiley

• What About Bob?

3. Spoon Theory

4. Profanity: a perseverance power-tool