{Craft + Room}
At a surreal art fair that took place over a series of backyards, I went there with my friend Charlie (not really a friend, not really named Charlie), he was looking for Christmas presents and I was looking for something un-namable that I still have not found.
There was, inexplicably, a craft room. It seemed to contain mostly glitter. Four people sat inside drinking tea and not making crafts.
There was a tip jar, and a sign on the door with the rules of Craft Room.
The first (and only) rule of craft room.
This is what the sign said:
RULES!
1) Don’t Die
There were no other rules.
That was it.
I wish I had taken a picture for you, if only to prove that none of this was a dream.
(It was not, but could have been.)
This has become somewhat of an inside joke.
Like, a really inside joke.
Mainly between me and me, or between me and the aspects of self, the roles I try on, the Incoming Identities.
We are the gathering of [Havi Bells], the vixen-ey vagabond Bond heroine aka the Glamorous Assassin, the eccentric hermit, the writer-righter who is also the wanderer-wonderer, the copper queen out in the desert…
I don’t get out much, so really maybe all jokes are inside jokes.
Not lost.
“I think we might be lost”, says another friend.
“No worries”, I say, “there’s only one rule and that’s the first rule of craft room, we’ll follow it for as long as we can…”
It’s a pretty good rule.
I mean, as rules go.
Or maybe better said, an intention, set with love and hope, for this moment of right here right now.
Can we breathe a breath for RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW…
Again, not lost.
When I awaken in a panic, I mutter to myself — “FIRST RULE OF CRAFT ROOM! FIRST RULE OF CRAFT ROOM!”, over and over, until I have to laugh and remember to breathe again. It will all be okay. It’s just craft room.
Worst case we will over-glitter or spill some glue.
We can make tea. We can turn this into art. We can kintsugi the cracks (or turn them into windows, to expand on Leonard Cohen).
We can learn to marvel at process.
What does it mean to love the broken?
And, maybe more importantly, what happens when we can do this?
Sometimes I get a glimpse of what it means to be the person who can celebrate the unraveling.
We can practice this. Sometimes.
At other times all this is out of reach, and that’s okay too.
Sometimes all we can do is just breathe, one step and then another step, one pause and then another pause, this can all be solved and resolved, one step at a time.
A dream that was in fact a dream.
I had the most bonkers series of dreams last night, first I was in a vigilante girl gang, there were four of us in tall leather boots kicking ass and taking names. It sounds thrilling but it was also scary, we were in it to win it, and it turns out that winning it in those life or death situations is kind of high stress, understatement.
Then I was wearing a robe and talking, furiously, animatedly, to my mother, who is dead but in the dream she was not, about how awful it is to wake up each day and remember that Hillary Clinton is not president, and that the system will never un-rig itself because rigging has no interest in being done or undone.
And then I saw a cat on a shore stepping onto a velvet cushion, and watched as it sailed straight for its destination on the other side.
Throughout these dreams the common thread was that I was searching for missing words.
When I awoke, four words were waiting for me in my mind…
Actually it was three words followed by a phrase that was also an image.
+ Agency
+ Flexibility
+ Stability
+ Sure Footed Clear Eyed (like that cat)
Like that cat!
I’m in Arizona, home to jaguars and bobcats, and complicated border crossings.
I’m a panther, in training.
That cat from the dream was so majestic, so sure-footed, so clear about its direction. Even as the stepping onto the cushion was a bit wobbly, it had no doubt that this was the right move, and not just because it was the only move left.
I need some of that right now, that Wild Clarity, that Trust In Certaintly, all the superpowers of Purpose, Devotion, Dedication and of course, one step at a time, while remaining super chill.
Super chill because this is just a grand experiment in arts & crafts, and there is only one rule of Craft Room, and even that one rule can only be followed until a certain point (everything ends, and eventually it is long-nap time for all of us), but right now we are EMBODIED.
Yes, Embodied. We are here, in bodies.
And while EMBODIED might sometimes be hard, challenging, frustrating and certainly baffling and confusing, it is also treasure and a gift.
Everything we do to practice curiosity and grace as we learn more about what it means to be in conscious relationship with ourselves and our container, our breath, our be-ing, it all matters.
It’s a craft room experiment in a way. Play, notice, decorate, adorn, start again.
Sometimes I can’t write.
Sometimes this is because too much pain.
Sometimes I am afraid of what I will say.
(Insight: what if I avoid writing because the things I have to say are important? Haha and then I get sad imagining that I will say them and they will just disappear in the stream…)
Sometimes I get hung up on all the ways someone could potentially misunderstand my meaning, and oh no what if they use what I say to beat themselves up, and Must Solve All Potential Misunderstandings In Advance Forever!
Forget and Remember.
Wait, let us breathe and return to Leonard Cohen:
FORGET THE PERFECT OFFERING
What is the imperfect offering, lovingly offered?
Is that not also the essence of Craft Room?
Things have been hard lately, yeah?
Well, for me they have and for many people I know.
A pain-filled time.
But we made it here. We are totally embodying the first rule of craft room, even as we are all, at whatever pace and timing, also dying.
But for now WE ARE HERE, and this is a big deal.
A thousand billion sparklepoints to us for crawling and clawing our way through 2018, emerging triumphant by virtue of having gotten here.
Thank you for being here, with me.
And maybe someone reading this thinks that doesn’t matter? I just want to say, very clearly, that it does matter. It matters to me. Even if we haven’t met. We made it. We are here. And just that, nothing else, is a triumph.
A dream, not mine.
My friend K texted me this morning:
“I had a dream about you last night, and I have no memory of what exactly (something political?) but it felt like a triumph, and I woke up and thought: I have to tell Havi that I had a dream in which she was TRIUMPHANT!”
What an amazing dream/friend!
Yes, my word for 2018 was TRIUMPH, and what a bold badass word that is.
How am I feeling?
Well, this year has been very full. A lot of life in one year. Let’s find the moments of triumphant.
0) We made it. We’re here. To the best of our ability we are following the first rule of Craft Room. Hell yes.
1) After four years mostly on the road, I found my place, what a triumph!
2) I spent most of 2017 in a state of first shock and then rage and fury as new lies and betrayals kept revealing themselves in the most painful breakup of all time, and my big wish for 2018 was to stop loving or caring about the person who hurt me. What a good wish: it worked. I uncovered all kinds of pain and sorrow underneath all that anger once it was gone, but also realized this person truly wasn’t worth even one of those tears, good riddance to trash, combined with endless compassion directed inward towards past-me for falling for the long con while dosed up on pheromones, now we know better. Knowing better is TRIUMPH. Not caring is TRIUMPH.
3) For the past couple years I’ve been feeling unsure and wobbly about where I want to go with the business, what I want to offer and in what forms, The Fluent Self is nearly fourteen years old and there was a lot of upheaval when we closed the center. I spent all year seeding wishes for Wild Clarity, and now I have it.
A day of feasting.
I had been feeling anxious about christmas because it is always the loneliest and most boring day but now it is also the anniversary of two different painful betrayals.
I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to be out. I just wanted to not go through the day.
But then a woman opened her car door into my mirror in a parking lot, and an exteremely entertaining interaction ensued, we decided to be friends, and since she is the only other jewish person I know in the entire southwest, I said COME OVER ON CHRISTMAS AND I WILL MAKE US PILES OF DELICIOUS FOOD.
Craft room.
In the mailbox were figs from my uncle. I sliced some into rice cooked with slivered almonds, and then stuffed red peppers with the mixture.
And I invented a tahini sauce with cardamom bitters, spicy date-honey, and vanilla-bean salt (!) to drizzle on top.
There were stuffed grape leaves too and olives and cheeses and spicy chocolate. And salat katzutz (chopped salad) topped with a fried egg.
It was all extremely delicious and my kitchen is a form of Craft Room.
We sat on cushions on the floor and talked about love and loss, watched pretty clouds sail across the skylight. We made it through.
Tabula rasa.
We don’t know what is coming. We can’t know. And we don’t get much of a say in it.
But we can be steady with intention, devoted to this conscious relationship with ourselves and our internal and external worlds.
Here is some of what I am seeding with love for this new year:
Devotion.
Dedication.
Embodiment.
Becoming.
Vision.
Arrival.
Purpose.
Fierce & Fearless.
I am ready to be not only triumphant but formidable in my triumph and in all of it.
May this all be for good, may it transpire in the spirit of play, with great regard for the rule of craft room.
Guess who is opening a new retreat center! Guess!
I will give you a clue in the form of this much enthusiasm:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(If you guessed me, the person who previously once upon a time ran two other extremely magical retreat centers, and then mysteriously dropped off the planet for like three or four years to process grief and identity stuff and the most painful breakup of all time, that is a really excellent guess and I fucking love you.)
It is here. The Secret Agency at Stargazer House. It is the center at the center and it opens and closes like a flower, just like us. We are only doing solo retreats this year, possibly back to groups in the future, have not decided yet.
Intro prices through Jan 14! And more to come about 2019…
A breath for Craft Room, for here-now, for this passage.
Hello, beautiful new year.
What witchy words and superpowers can we call on and in?
Resolutions Resolve!
Revolutions Revolve!
Roundness Rebalances!
Resonance Restored!
Re-entry!
Re-solved! Re-solved! Re-solved!(Aka all the powers of SUDDENLY SOLVED but even better than that!)
And of course my current favorite: what is good for me turns out to work out well for everyone, my good is everyone’s good, the wholeness of the whole is the good of all, the collective and the solitudinal, all working beautifully in unison, may it be so.
Do you want to wish some wishes with me here in imaginary Craft Room?
You are invited to be here with me, in whatever form you like.
You can name any noticings from this year, or call in any desired superpowers, or share anything sparked for you from what I wrote here. Love and enthusiasm and [!!!] always welcome.
As always, we are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. Each of us is in our own process, and process is unique. Sparks of sweetness for everyone in this orbit, doing the work of self-fluency or letting it brew under the surface which also counts, it all counts, wishing you only good.
xoxo
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Wow, your new place looks wonderful!
Lots of !!!!!!
Sending good wishes to everyone for the new year.
<3 <3 <3 happy new beautiful year!
!!!!!!!!
* <3 * <3 *
We are here, together, and I am very glad of it.
When I read this post and look at the page for your new sanctuary, my heart is brimming with joy and wonder and wishes and dreams. Thank you for bringing it into being!
*raising my glass and smiling at you*
Oh, and I think Wild Upgrade just became my gwish for 2019, so thank you SO MUCH for that inspiration!! * <3 *
<3 <3 <3 thank you for always being here to celebrate, that is such a delight. BRIMMING! Wish-brimming! I love it.
Thank you for the lovely reminder that I’ve managed to keep this most important rule, even during one of the most difficult years ever because of [silent retreat] and [silent retreat]. Planting wishes for Safety, Healing & Recovery, Ease, Spaciousness and Transformation in 2019.
Much love for your new retreat center!
!!!!!!!! indeed!
Love to you!
<3 back to you!
<3 <3 <3 I’m so sorry about this rough year and I support and second all your amazing beautiful wishes!
Your new retreat center!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The words agency, stability, and flexibility speak to me. I am seeding these qualities and wishing for them to permeate everything I do this year.
I have been thinking about the parable of roots and wings, of bird and tree. Right now, I want the qualities of a tree: rootedness, strength, standing tall and strong, supporting others (the bird!) without holding them, releasing what it no longer needs, and growing through all seasons, hot and cold, wet and dry, good and bad.
2018 was for me a Year of Emerging And Recovery. 2019 is going to be a Year of Ease And Restructuring (for more ease).
Oh Vicki, I love Ease And Restructuring for more ease, that is an inspiration for me, and growing through all seasons, amen. <3
!!!!!!!! your beautiful building! the roundness and the glow and the triangles!
Hurrah for still being here! Hurrah for having made it! Hurrah for TRIUMPH! For winning and for winging! For the crack where the light gets in and for the brokenness that is beautiful. For the imperfect offering.
YES! Roundness, Glow & Triangles are the best superpowers, what a great reminder, I already feel 20% more Triumpohant just reading this! <3 <3 <3
This is my year of Yes, (with Ease and Knowing) and here you are turning up back in my email after being absent for a full year. Evil Google hid your updates in my Nasties Folder and I found you this morning. I am so glad to hear from you. My 2018 was hard as it was for so many. The Monster Handbook was invaluable. So now I’m looking for Yes and skipping stones again. Your centre looks glorious!
YEAR OF YES!!!! Right timing! Hidden updates! I love looking for yes, that is beautiful. Into it! Best year ever! <3
i love you, Havi. it’s so good to read you again and YAY for a new center.
personally, 2018 was a year of intense diving into my shadows and fears. not easy, but oh so good.
2019 tells me it will be about work and taking projects out of the mind and into the world.
I love you too, babe! Thank you. Yeah, I hear you on the intense diving work. I like the theme of out of the mind and into the world. Ready to do the work here too. Glowing lots of love for your new year!
Beautiful! Many <3 <3 <3s for your new space, it's so wonderful. So very happy for you/us.
When I saw the title of the post, immediately I thought of "craft" in the witchy way, which (witch!) I want to uncover/discover a lot more of this year. Also, I think my word for the year is shaping up to be "space", so the whole phrase "craft room" is very sparkly for me in many ways that veer off into my witchy, crafty, roomy self.
YES! WITCHCRAFT ROOM! And all the good and useful forms of crafting. I am for it and #realwitchlife is absolutely a big theme this year. Let’s do it. SPACE SPACE SPACE for crafting our way into our witchiest selves!
It is a sweet thing to witness you being reborn, once again.
Thank you, Chris! What a beautiful phrasing, thank you for that too. Was just thinking of YOUR SHINING MAGICAL SELF while I was driving through New Mexico xoxoxox
May the constellations down with fortunate omens and wishes for fabulous retreats and happy times!
That’s shine down, all you stars paying attention!
YES! The Shining strongly implied in the down! What a beautiful wish, may it be so!!!!
wow to this picture of becoming and to those of the new roundhouse. beauty and adventure and coziness.
truly grateful for the days finally getting longer where i live and for the symbolism of new year. thanks to all that was 2018 and a *deep sigh* thank you, next. i traditionally choose verbs as my annual motto and this time it’s to harvest. i felt so good about this choice at first, but now my wariness caught up with me and it feels like arrogance or shortsightedness: my monsters connect it to being megalomaniac and lazy, which consequentially leads to having nothing to harvest and or grow the next year. ouf. well actually it’s my monsters who are shortsighted because letting the fruits rot on the fields or trees has never helped anyone keep house in the following year and is tremendous waste. without the harvest, you won’t even have the seeds for the next year. (yes!! this is good intel…) also harvesting does not equal being lazy at all, it’s more a labor in itself: to carefully look, to see what is ripe and what needs a little (or a lot) more time – so it’s all about timing, but also about the knowledge how to collect and process and store without spoiling. but also it’s joy, to bask in glory and vastness and abundance, to feel rich and blessed.
(this is not to say that only labor is good. being lazy is fine and a pleasure and so necessary. but necessary reminder for me: not only busting-my-ass-off is labor; keeping books, looking back, evaluating, appreciating, planning, structuring, scheming might as well be).
i love all of this text, especially needed to lay eyes on “tabula rasa”.
thank you and godspeed on new adventures.
*waving from Seattle* The retreat space looks glorious.
Thekla! Was just thinking of you and the incredible BURST of superpowers we came up with at Rally!
We made it, we are here, we transitioned and it is 2019.
The transition day itself was rather „ugh“. Only comforting the neighbours‘ dog for half an hour after midnight because the poor thing was both paralyzed and shaking (these creatures have their TRE mechanism) at the same time gave sense to the evening. Resolve: early birds don‘t need to force themselves into being night owls just because it is New Year‘s Eve.
Thank you for naming seeds, I moved to a new place with a beautiful huge terrace and will plant them, adding seeds of
Energy
Discoveries
Companionship
Champagne bottles (full bottles, needless to say…)
Salat Katzutz – ever since my last visit to Israel all my salads are like this, even lettuce, so much handier to eat!
Stargazer House sounds beautiful beyond words, so thrilled to hear.
Mostly lurking but still very happy to keep returning to this place – an oasis in the overwhelming web!
Lots of love to you! And yes to being true to animal selves and full bottles! I like that this place is an oasis. That is a reassuring image.
Oh Havi, wow. I have been reading your writings for about eight years, and in that time what changes we have made! Now I am here to acknowledge the incredible process of transformation and self-kindness that you have shown us all. And also to plant a seed for my own business of transformation, a place that claimed me and asked me to make it real. My powers of manifestation and collaboration have got me this far and I love it. But I am so scared that it is not working yet in the money way, and I need it to do so in a hurry, or I am once again into the mystery. I also know that the mystery is a beautiful place, but I could really do with this one working out ok. I want to be here for many years. I want to do this work I am doing. I have never felt so complete and so right. So I pray that I can allow the flow of money that is needed to keep this baby going. I pray that I can find a lightness in this needing it to work, a trust in all events, a work ethic that allows for fun, a community that wants to support me that is big enough that it can. With so much love.
What beautiful wishes!!! Here is to lightness! <3 <3 <3
Wonderful. “don’t die” is a very good rule. I was struck by how non trivial this is after a number of celebrity suicides last year. It seems like a like a low bar to set but it is kind of liberating to line it up
next to all the self judgements that are mostly abstract bullshit by comparison.
Thanks Havi, may your pen never run dry.
Thank you, what a beautiful wish. I appreciate it! And I find the rule non-trivial and liberating too, there is so much life in this life, but also so much of the abstract bullshit that complicates. Getting here matters, breathing through it matters, I am really loving the simplicity of this rule and its reminder to me of what is actually important. 🙂
Hooray for your/our roundness rebalancing! The triumph of Havi Bell!
Ready for a new year. Ready for rebalancing. Ready for every room to be craft room.
<3<3<3 and !!! and [.] [.] [.]
Thank you!!! <3 and omg the superpower of what if every room is craft room?!?!?! YES!!!!
The idea that the only rule of Craft Room (Make Things! Make Room! Room to Craft! [!!!]) is “Don’t Die” has lots of echoing bells for me today. If that’s the only RULE, then everything else is mutable.
This year’s word for me is “svelte”, which has nothing to do with bodies and everything to do with how a cat moves through times and space and being. I’m paring down, not for the sake of emptiness (I hate emptiness, actually) but for room to curl up and space to stretch out in sun beams. I’m clearing out metaphorically too: my schedule, my commitments, my “shoulds”, and learning to walk like a cat with meandering purpose.
All the excitement for the new RETREAT! I’m intrigued by the idea of so much space and sky so far away from my lush swamp and spare scrub.
Making room to craft! YES. And if everything else is mutable, so much room (craft room!) to figure the rest out. Love it! And love SVELTE which has big resonance with my panther ops and yes to stretching in sunbeams, this is all amazing and exciting!
So freakin’ gorgeous, so excited for this new space <3
So energetic for you and this year.
My world this year is 'unfurl' because I was going to pick "evolve" but i've done nothing but evolve for 3 years, so it's time to break free of my chrysalis and Friggin' Fly damn it. 😀
Also, seeing all the hexagons made me just… relaxing sigh out loud 😀
THANK YOU! Unfurl is such an amazing word and I feel it (I typed amazing world is a great typo, a world of unfurling, worlds unfurling1), and agree, it has more positive oomph than evolving. A hexagonal compass of hexagons! Same on the sigh out loud. <3
For the first time ever, I actually ordered myself a piece of jewellery with my word on it because I feel its going to stick with me beyond just this year <3
And because I am ME, I got it in RUNIC, partly because each letter has it's own sub-meaning too <3
[pic in case interested: https://www.instagram.com/p/BsWZ8WtHaEs/%5D
I like to follow rules…and to break rules (because I’m full of multitudes like that!)
I just have to celebrate living (ha!) by this rule today! I have felt recently like I’m going to die (e.g. while laying my sweet squooshy self out there to my boss or partner, or while ripping muscles to get ripped muscles!). But not dying is out of my control. Yay, I’m free of responsibility for and judgement of how well I’m following the rule! Yeah, I know (and obsess about) some of my risk factors for dying but today I didn’t die! I’m not going to wait around to die, and I’m not going to be afraid of the feeling I will die.
My beautiful wish is for a year of Brightness (I could make that into a compass if I say Brit-ness, ha! [Monty Python reference here]). I’m wearing the brightest spring-green sweater of aliveness, so that’s a confirmatory clew! (I had made a rule to ignore the the start-a-shiny-new-year commitments until springtime, but I’m breaking it!)