The Museum of Loss and Renewal, settling in

I'm just coming to the end of my first week of residency at The Museum of Loss and Renewal in Collemacchia, Italy. And what a week it has been. My alternative title for this post might also be: How to Survive a Migraine, and indeed I have written a personal essay this week with that very title after my regular migraines hit, four of the past six days.

Arrival here has been all about interacting with my environment: the mountains, the weather, the feline and human locals, the mosquitos, the house where I am staying (especially the various kitchen gadgets that seem to act up when I use them), and books, books, books. Now that I have settled in and found my own system for writing and engaging with the quiet world of this village, it feels as if my time here has really begun. It has been more than 3 years since my last physical writing-trek-into-the-unknown of a remote residency, and it took me 48 hours here to recognise that my reactions to arrival were very similar to the last couple of times I did this. Namely, a bit of light shock at being so remote, then worry about how to source food, but then acceptance of the challenge, one that I have, again, chosen. 

On my second day I set about looking for a way to hang up some of the papers that I brought with me: photocopies of pages from creative notebooks back home that contain quotes from colleagues and reminders for me about what is important to my working practice. Without blue tack or tape, my travel clothesline took on a new purpose and now hosts these pages, hung in one of my work areas. As soon as this was in place, I shifted my focus to another important task: where to set up my meditation space? 

In 2019, during a collaborative residency with ceramic artist Martha Cook, we established daily meditation as part of our working practice. Before then, meditation had been something I mainly did in crisis, or to calm anxiety, or to do when I needed to try and figure out a specific junction in my life. Fast forward to now, here in Collemacchia, at the stone house on the corner where I am living, and an obvious space made itself known. 

This week, meditation has become a lifeline to clearing my migraine-fogged head in the mornings, to helping me stay grounded and positive; it has offered a space to sit quietly and look at the mountains around me, the place from which I listen to the tree full of great tits outside the window, where I watch leaves begin to curl and fall as early autumn finally touches southern Italy. 

In one of my favourite books, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person M.C. Richards defines the act of centering (a bit of pottery vocabulary that works as exquisite metaphor for me): 'Centering: that act which precedes all others on the potter's wheel. The bringing of the clay into a spinning, unwobbling pivot, which will then be free to take innumerable shapes as potter and clay press against each other. The firm, tender, sensitive pressure which yields as much as it asserts.' 

Meditation is my act of centering, especially when I am far away from my normal life and in fully unknown surroundings. It is survival and homecoming. It grounds me so my writing and work can be grounded. It often becomes part of a morning freewriting routine and the first step in my day. As a migraineur who suffers from vertigo-as-aura, it literally helps me to attain an 'unwobbling pivot' point physically and mentally. And from this center-as-stepping-off-point, I begin my second week here; I will remember the value of re-centering each day, vertigo or not.