The Journey of Seed-Sourcing: A Collective Open-Writing Practice

Understanding the Essence of "Seed-Sourcing"

"Seed-Sourcing" is a collective open-writing practice.

These texts are process-documents - meaning they are spontaneous (written in 10 minutes or less) and utterly unedited. They are intended to be read only in the spirit of their context (i.e. - not treated as 'literature', but rather a trace of an immediate arrival in the moment, belonging solely to the shared practice).

The Journey of Presence

A Tapestry of Experiences

Wet fur, cold nose, yellow eyes, dry lips, bright skies, missed train.

To be here is a continuation of a long journey of patiently observing and acknowledging every slow and careful step of a bare foot on a sharp rock, wet moss, or smooth sand. Each tiny breath, every bold move, every sudden tremble, every click of a keyboard, every drop of sweat, every blink of an eye, every line in a book, every frame in a film, every beat in a song, every file in a cloud storage, every cent in a wallet, every pair of socks, every cup of coffee in the early morning, every inhale of fresh air with a scent of unfamiliar flora, every kilometre of daily walks and runs, every document in the dossier, every meeting with a stranger, every symbol written, every word said, every memory lost, every touch felt, every burst of laughter, and every wound healed.

The Echo of Existence

Hear hear,

Today I am not here.

Then where are you?

I have always been, but just not here, everywhere all at once.

Like a golden spiderweb spanning the universe, and you are just a small speck, rope walking on one of my silken threads.

Will you stay?

Let me follow the echo of your touch through the dark.

Send ripples through the endless weave.

The State of Being

Here, hear.

Now, here.

By place in, placed in, in a place here.

To live in the world but not of this world.

Awake. Wake. Wakefulness.

Arriving by grace, in the body, corporeal, here in my feet, in my heart.

In my sitting bones.

In the softness behind the eyes.

In the space between my head and the ceiling.

Am I seated here?

Sitting here.

Is this a sitting?

Are all the parts of me here accounted for, acknowledged, seen, and heard?

What do I hear tap tap tapping?

Bird songs, clanking, chewing, breathing.

Breath. Death.

The sound waves that are entering my ear holes, am I whole?

Whole heart.

The Threads of Memory

Reflections of the Past

Here. Now.

The rustling of electricity in the milk I was sucking as a baby, on the 10th of November 1986.

My sweaty palm touching the metal railing of the staircase, while descending in a hurry to meet with my friends outside, and play. 10th of November 1996.

The tip of the pencil piercing through the thin greyish paper while I was drawing, for the 100th time, the silhouette of the Mother of God, on a 2m high paper, in a workshop at the National Arts University in Bucharest… 10th of November 2012.

The rush of night perfumes through my nose, my bones, my brain, and through the membranes of my scream… 10th of November 2016 Vincennes, Paris.

The rusty, ancient spears of my sight, coming out of my pupils, like the cranes assisting the lift-off of a stainless steel cathedral going to Mars. And entering the pupils of Elise. We are in the library, the two of us, 4 o’clock in the morning, storytelling, in front of the fire. Here, 200 Cosquer. 10th of November, 2023.

Here. Now.

The Weight of Asphyxiation

There are shoes better built for running away than the ones sat under the stairs in the kitchen.

There are bodies better built for running away than this one sat on a cushion beside the chimney.

There are moments better built for running away than this…

I am having the most remarkable experience of asphyxiation.

It is quietly folded between my collarbones, invisibly nested in a place that no one touches.

I also do not touch this place.

At least not on purpose.

I know something about asphyxiation.

Thirteen years ago, I presented a performance in which I was (rather lovingly) waterboarded in a performance space in Belgium. Waterboarding, it seems, was actually invented there.

Breath-control used to be a source of immeasurable exhilaration.

(The inviting another to decide when you breathe and when you don’t; this asks for an acuity of observation that far surpasses what most human beings ask of one another. I had found such a talented and attentive counterpart.)

Now - enclosed spaces. Even the forest (which, as Lies reminded, is most certainly a dear friend of mine and an avid advocate of my liberation). Being here means hiding.

Feeling inappropriate.

Feeling inadequate.

Feeling… without refuge. And it is quiet.

I ask myself, “how honest can I be?” here.

I ask myself, “write something true. All you need to do is write something true.”

It will make them all uncomfortable. The alienation will deepen.

This finding the way into trust… it is exactly the work I feel we are all here to do. With each. With exactly each other. (Perhaps this is my own preoccupation.) I have the impression this is what serves the surfacing and the great mythic emergence we somehow all said Yes to. Safety is not everything. Safety makes trust impossible. One must be a little unsafe to need to trust - otherwise there’s no use for it.

I am trusting by writing this.

Say something true.

I am trusting by writing this.

Say something honest.

I don’t know why everyone is here and what they are longing for. And I so wish we would spend more time talking about this. Because I don’t think we know one another until we do. Until we dare to talk about longing. And I think that the shaping of trust is the sharpest carving tool in the sculpting of friendship. And this is still, somehow, the most noble art. Fellowship. Friends of shared purpose.

I cannot stop thinking about this.

I cannot even do my own work, my own urgent work, because I can’t stop thinking about this.

It is already happening. Yes yes, I know. But it could also happen. Something honest. (A risk. A small risk.)

When are we going to talk about love?

The Nature of Existence

The Awakening

I awoke into myself.

I could hear the word: I N C A R N A T E.

Use the voice to calibrate your presence, buzz and hum and you can be here.

Here here! Says the pirate in me.

That is where I want to be. I want to share from deep in my soul to other souls, I want to merge to become a BIG SOUL.

Why?! I don’t know! I could come up with noble facts and reasons. It just doesn’t matter. I want the purity of physics to alchemize possibilities in ourselves. To experience states of Flow and find out what else is possible living in this vessel called Human. I want to escape the confinement of words. Could it happen through sound? Yes, guttural sounds as conduits to deeper essence. The sounds that our inner animal makes, bringing us deeper into communion of the origins of life, the mitochondrial power banks, the architecture of the cosmos. Light! Knowledge! Beauty! Source! What is real power? The purity beyond the layers of personality, morale, societal normality.

“Some people say you’re crazy,” one interviewer said to Bjork.

To which she responds, “Oh really? Well that’s on them really. When I was around 5 years old, I made a decision. I noticed I could go two ways: one way I could take the side of being with morale and act normal and behaved, and the other side I could choose to be anything that I really wanted to do. So I chose to be on that side of the canyon, and I just having a great time.”

Hear Hear! Is the quaker in me – (I hear these people are passionate junkies of truth and fervor.)

Yes, I have one of those in me.

And I observe. The listening in me is wide awake. It comes at the moment where my box yet hasn’t formed for the day. It takes seconds for the mind to rush in with thoughts and the daily structure that it remembers how to exist within it. I was able to remain in that gap for a while receiving the next instructions for my Being’s deliveries to the world. N U R T U R A N C E.

Embodying my own internal hug.

The Dance of Distraction

The Blockage

Yesterday there was blockage.

Unintentional.

A morning lost to unrestful sleeping.

I hear alerts.

I hear the distracting frantic clacking of keyboards punched and fluttered against.

Harrison Bergeron in every moment aware, uncontrollably hearing the slurps and emissions of eight others.

Wheezing, scraping, cracking, clacking, smacking.

Distractions abound.

Oh shit. I’m going to have to read this in front of all of them.

Painted into a corner of neurosis and distractions.

Oh fuck.

Oh well.

The sound of my own scratching.

My head and neck are screaming.

Yesterday there was a blockage.

At first un- then intentional.

I hope it brings freedom.

Sometimes a wall is for protection.

Sometimes a doorway hurts.

The Existence of Being

Yesterday I existed, as my feet were threading the hills.

Should I document my existence?

Is it more peaceful to be forgotten, or to be remembered?

What does it mean to leave something behind?

Here. Such a small word, here… as if existence could ever belong to one place.

Today, I exist again, after a night that could have been my leaving.

My heart was restless; I felt a little scared, but not like I used to feel scared.

I just wondered if there might be a spare key in the house, so people could find me in bed, not breathing.

There’s a strange comfort in the thought of being missed.

That someone, eventually, would come looking.

I think someone would have wondered; why I didn’t show up at seed sourcing, the sharing circle, the community dinner.

Someone would have found it odd.

Someone would have come to find me.

Because, as far as they knew, I existed.

The last time they saw me, I was.

If I had died, would I have stopped existing?

Or only here? Or not even here at all?

Maybe the pounding of my heart was the Grim Reaper speaking,

as we met on the hills yesterday,

where I was, then, existing.

Maybe he wanted to meet me on the edge, not to take me,

but to tell me that he felt me too.

Maybe, for a second, I existed last night like those who nearly die and suddenly see ghosts,

because their fabric has tasted what it means to be one.

Or perhaps simply because, when they returned,

they forgot to close the door behind them.

The Complexity of Sleep

The Insomnia Struggle

Insomnia is here.

My complicated relationship with sleep!

There are weights on my upper eyelids,

And my mind is fucking alert,

Tired.

Yet don’t let my eyes shut down.

My body is locked to the bed,

The middle part is an anchor.

Literally saying, I’m done:

You cannot hear.

The Transformation of Conflict

The Productive Core

There might be a productive core in every conflict, come to think of it.

For example, I can turn a cold rock warm with just my own palm or foot.

It will take some time and patience, and as soon as the rock leaves this strange relationship, it will quickly lose the warmth.

But for instance, the bone beads that I’m wearing on my neck sometimes are able to contain my temperature for quite some time.

I even believe that they carry the warmth of every person who ever held them and then the warmth of a creature whose body they were supporting and then this creature’s parent and then this creature’s parent’s parent and so on.

I know for sure that I am a son of a fearless woman, daughter of a fearless woman, daughter of an ancient rock, cold and silent.

Which means there’s a fire in every stone.

The Fear of Love

I was afraid to love.

I am afraid to love.

I might be afraid to love.

What is fear? What is love?

Fear is the moment where a leap turns into a fall.

Love is the moment where choosing someone turns into a leap, and then a fall.

Freefalling is a sport of mine.

I have these dreams again, of falling.

It is close to flying, like drifting through the air like those sky whales that seem abundant here.

I think I am no sky whale.

I almost had a bird of prey collide with my car yesterday.

Head on. At the last second, it flexed its wings and veered away.

Casual.

I wish I were like that: sure, convicted, elegant in my path through the sky.

But I know I’m not.

My freefalling is not drifting; it’s not flying.

I lose control, and there is only this deep drop.

My stomach lurches, my breath stops altogether.

In some dreams, the fall halts just before I hit the ground.

In the bad ones, I feel the crash.

But in others, I go through.

Through the earth, through that thin line we call the horizon.

And I’m enveloped by safe earth, by a darkness that is not saturated but is alive with a heartbeat and breath.

I think love is that. Being surrounded after a freefall.

Whispering; you’re safe, welcome home.

The Paradox of Fear and Love

The Duality of Existence

The paradox of/between fear and love is a complex dance.

I needed to stand up to look at this paradox from a distance.

I have my back pressed up against the wall, my heels are touching the skirting board, I spread my arms out to let my fingernails touch the wall.

I am aware of the back of my hands.

I needed my bipedal form to override my multi-dimensional formlessness state of existence.

Why? Because of this duality, the duality of fear and love is what makes us human. Is that true?

I'm often less inclined to be in my human form.

In this lifetime, I remember the first time I actually felt like a human.

It was in Iceland.

Survival there is real.

One's blood needs to be thick.

An upgrade took place there.

Beyond duality.

In a state of complacency, the blood is viscous; it moves around the body with ease.

There is no need to fear here, but does that mean one is a void of love?

Is it really this simple? Is every action/state a choice between fear and love?

K.I.S.S (Keep it simple stupid).

The Art of Connection

Embracing the Complexity

Some kind matters anyway.

Abruptly irregular and transcendentally inert. Quiet. Quite erroneous. As he used to say.

Who? The child.

The child has a goose. A red goose.

The child has no more patience inside. So does the goose inside.

The blue child steps into the iron of adequate life. How does he do that? Like all children. Blue and red.

The goose, at its 20th floor, holds a library of manuscripts of tantric practices.

What are tantric practices? Adequate lies that you so wish to believe.

The very special terms of the world and the lips of someone are not that interesting. The special, mysterious words, that is. Because they are not of the child. Because they are not in the body, in the world.

That is why Wittgenstein does not use fancy words, like other superstars of intellect.

That is why simple words can make the world anew. Like the child in the forest and the red tree with red juice inside that I want to drink.

Fuck you, Rik.

The red thick juice I want to squeeze out of your flesh for the appropriate and urgent reasons, Bjork!

The red thick juice of that book I first managed to digest and turned into a hand.

The color of pomegranates. Beauty can be intellectual. Like Wes Anderson boring. To himself especially. Just like Sara cannot be with her body. The body is defined in very misguided ways. Body is not a simple word and I have nothing to do with it.

How often does a child need to use the word body? He might use the word hand, ass, hair.

Body is a relatively artificial word. Thus, relatively useless. Because the body does not have it in its vocabulary. Because the body is the child. And the body starts with Once upon a time, so don’t tell me about Mitochondria, Rodrigues. Your children do not need to survive.

David is in the cult of cult.

The Liberation of God

The Radical Art of Prayer

I don’t buy it. (Am I alone in this? nonsense.)

Fear is evidence of Love.

(I can’t find another way to think about it.)

I am only afraid when I fear the loss of something I love - and so that fear emerges only by and through and in love.

I can try on other seemingly contradictory dynamics:

apathy. indifference. complacency. objectification.

If I want to go hunting for a real paradox - I will grab my gear.

I will grab the gear of a lepidopterist questing for the only butterfly who has ever belonged in Antarctica.

True paradoxes are so delicate and so precious and so… impossibly….

(Ugh! I start to hate this word beauty.)

Paradoxes are Yes. Paradoxes are the countercurrents meeting in my confluence that the parts of me I like the best all sing Yes to.

So let me find the whirlpool of paradox in my belly.

Contraction (from fear) is also a coming-to-life.

I believe in safety because I believe in risk.

I do not believe in safety as an optimal or desirable state or condition.

I believe in safety on behalf of the things that are dear to me, that are only ever found in conditions that either allow or require or force Risk.

(I spoke to Jess and Cécile a bit about this on the beach yesterday.

Thank God for them! And thank God Jess said Yes to leading this morning! God Bless Her and her generous spirit!)

This is a funny form of playing pretend.

(I’m not this person.)

God Bless You All!

I am ridiculous.

I understand that there is no opposite to Love.

And thus, in my eyes, there is no paradox that includes Love.

It is omnipresent - but cannot be so strictly defined or determined such that anything could be in friction or seeming contradiction with it.

Let’s say: All Experiences (including Emotions) Are Complex.

There is always more than one thing happening.

And Love is ALWAYS one of the things happening.

ALWAYS.

The question is: love of what?

What do you Love right now?

What do you love right now by writing what you are writing or doing what you are doing or thinking what you are thinking or sitting how you are sitting?

What do I Love right now?

Here.

Being in this room all together (Even with Zo in her little heavenly library-annex).

Writing.

What a fucking unlikely and lucky fucking life!

Fire.

Nes.

Love.

Focus.

Chai.

And the endlessly charming symphony of unscored keyboards.

Who will walk with me this week to talk about God and Love and the great gift of Fear and the great art of Friendship and the great revolution of Reclaiming Prayer for the Liberation of God and the God-awful bombing in Lebanon?

(Lies is leaving. Who will I walk with?)

Will I come to believe that my writing is of sufficient interest to the people here, to my fellow fellows, to begin to share it again? (Instead of hiding)

I say to myself (while brushing my teeth)

Whatever you do - do not be a coward.

Be anything - but don’t be a coward.

(while folding my blanket)

(while boiling water)

(while petting the dog)

(while feeding the birds)

(while toasting the bread)

(while examining the exact nuance of the sky)

(while responding to mail)

Be anything - but don’t be a coward.

This coming year has announced itself.

It will be the Year of the Albatross.

The Final Reflection

Embracing the Paradox

Galaxies, colors, prayers, and other organelles from a textbook.

Or the paradoxes of existing for generations yet no one has a clue as to how.

Every human is trying out something different.

Some commit to the following of religions that supply their child ego-state an enough false sense of security to give up their lives, money, time, children, and psyche to the spiral of repetition.

The general rule of thumb is if something doesn’t work: attack it!

If it sticks out, kill it!

This will maintain sanity.

That’s how we extirp organs. Hm, ‘the gallbladder is just an extra, don’t worry about it. Let’s take it out.’

Humans defying nature as if their doctor certificates have any sort of compatibility with truth.

Ah, ‘just take the next pill. Inject this. You’re next, only one year in line for your urgent care.’

Rodrigues was not aware that he was feeding a paradigm of illusions to generations of children.

He had a wall of trophies and medals for his 30+ years of being a good Samaritan.

Little did anyone ever know that being a good Samaritan was a way to call out the one in a million case of the Samaritan who was not traditionally stingy, mean-hearted, and crass.

No one knows shit.

Just like extirpating organs, we also have done an excellent job at demonizing our feelings.

Fearing fear to the extreme.

Or profiting from it through horror films, amusement parks, or the abundance of fantasies lived on a daily basis of what life is about, what relating is about, what God is or who we are.

‘Fear is bad. Fear needs to be killed! It will never help you. Fear is the opposite of love!’

New age pseudoscience bullshit.

Acknowledging Fear could very well be the gateway of deep internal knowledge, a type of wisdom that would otherwise be essential for evolution out of this deep bloody mess.

Conclusion: The Art of Being

In this journey of seed-sourcing, we explore the depths of our existence.

We confront our fears and embrace our loves.

We acknowledge the paradoxes that shape our lives.

Through this collective practice, we find connection, understanding, and ultimately, ourselves.

Let us continue to share, to write, and to be present in this beautiful tapestry of life.

May we always remember that the essence of our being is intertwined with the threads of love and fear, creating a rich narrative that is uniquely ours.