Estephania Bonnett

New roads I arrived without any expectation of what I would find in these 10 days. I learned so much from myself and I made the most amazing inside journey. I met incredible people and I feel that we have established a connection of absolute love and mutual acceptance of who we are. My feeling today is: FREEDOM Freedom to be who we are without having to wear any masks.Freedom to hear and talkFreedom to feelFreedom to beFreedom to doFreedom to rediscoverFreedom to shareFreedom to changeFreedom to breatheFreedom to have timeFreedom to have space 10 days ago I thought that authenticity is the inner truth and today I have the complete certainty that it is so. My act of pure authenticity was to re-operate this house, to give life to what is inside and outside it, to see it with transparency and to let it express without any expectation other than that of the BEING. This is my inner truth. My authenticity. “I stay home today and won´t open my door to anyone but my mind´s door is wide openThey come and go as they please disagreeable Friends, incompatible acquaintances”– Abbas Kiarostami

The ability to communicate Photo by Iason Athanasiadis We share the same reality but different truths. As a fundamental part of the growth of this house, it is necessary to share a dialogue that is nurtured through hearing and speaking. Each one shares his truth through these two instruments and precisely because of this it is so important to express ourselves with the correct words and to have the ability to hear. Dialogue opens up a world of possibilities, differences, and opinions that come from the personal history of each one and from their way of living and experiencing the world. Different opinions show me other ways that I can decide to take or not to take, but the important thing is to know the infinite number of possibilities and paths that are available to each of us. In our conversations we understand that there is nothing black and white but there is a very interesting palette of colors. As Ahmad Kiarostami quoted one of his friends, “Opinions change facts more than facts change opinions.”

Experiencing I am grateful that the guests I have chosen make me feel confident. I can tell they will take care of the space, and everything inside it, as much as they can. We have modified some organization of the objects, we have closed some windows and opened others, we have reorganized some rooms but the most important thing is that the essence is always and always will be the one that I feel comfortable with. There are some places that I show some but not others, there are some objects that I share with some but not with others and there are spaces that only belong to me. The important thing is to be living an experience. To experience a new moment, a moment in which all the foundations, the history, the scars, and the patches come together to inhabit this space that we live right now. A moment of pure authenticity, of pure reality. “…She would no longer walk her way, but fly.”– Growing Blind by Rainer Maria Rilke

Open Doors My work has been totally introspective. I have learned from me. I have heard all the noises and creaks of this house. I have integrated all its objects, its corners, its silences, its darkness, its rays of light. After having let in the sunlight through the windows, cleaning the space and recognizing that all these corners belong to me, today I feel that I want to open the doors. My guests will enter this space and discover this house as it is. I´ll put myself in an open position because I was the one who decided to invite them. When each one enters my house I would like them to feel comfortable, in a warm and friendly space but I know there will be rooms and spaces I would rather prefer no to be showing, there will be others that I will feel totally confident and grateful to be be on them, as there will be others we will need to do some adjustments depending on how many and who we are in it. However, I have some certainty of how incredible this experience is going to be. Incredible not as like we will be in a contact joy, because for sure there are going to be moments that I do not like, but knowing that my house will be enriched with what each one brings with themselves. A simple entry to lay the foundations of this invitation: “Now we will count to twelveand we will keep still.For once on the face of the earth,Let’s not speak in any language;Let’s stop for one second,And not move our arms so much.It would be a fragrant momentWithout rush, without engines;We would all be togetherIn a sudden uneasiness.Fishermen in the cold seaWould not harm whalesAnd the man gathering saltWould look at his hurt hands.Those who prepare green wars,Wars with gas, wars with fire,Victories with no survivors,Would put on clean clothesAnd walk about with their brothersIn the shade, doing nothing.What I want should not be confusedWith total inactivity.Life is that which you do;I want nothing to do with death.If we were not so single-mindedAbout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death,perhaps the earth can teach uswhen everything seems deadand then everything was alive.Now I´ll count up to twelveAnd you keep quiet and I will go.”– Keeping quiet by Pablo Neruda

Home The feeling of being alone recognizing this house often generates my anxiety. Anxiety to know if the path is correct or not. Anxiety to open another room that I have not discovered until now. The anxiety of doing it alone and of not having by my side those who accompanied me to recognize my terrain and my foundations. However, I have the feeling that this is the right place and the right time. My recognition of this house is totally personal and non-transferable. “When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all”– On trees by Herman Hesse

The shadows I begin to open the windows and these incredible rays start to enter filling the space with a very particular warm color. These rays reach almost all corners and objects of each of the rooms but also leave space for some shadowy corners to form. The shadows I see have different shapes and sizes depending on how close to the light they are. There are some shadows that comfort but there are others that become monstrous figures that I do not want to look at. However, I have left far behind and now I am learning how to live with my shadows. I feel the need for their presence. I feel that without them there would be no place of refuge to go to. I feel that these monstrous figures are part of my incredible imagination and when you see them up close they lack frivolity, instead, they are kind and invite me to sit down with them and get to know them as they really are. We do not know many times what the impact of light or a shadow will be, but each one is created for a reason. “…Be life In all its complicated splendor”– Shadow by Denise Vargas

The stage Today I feel safe. Sure to be walking even through the spaces that I do not know. Safe of this space, my space. However, I believe fervently that all spaces are different and that each one has a way to cross it and live it. I take this opportunity to put myself in each of those spaces and live it as it needs to be lived. Each of them has its own objects and their own characters. Each one comes with different sensations. But all of them are part of a whole. From a staging that combines all its versions. And all those characters, all those scenarios, all those costumes, all those movements, belong to me. I am the main character and I go inside knowing that improvisation keeps my character alive. Maintains its creativity at its best. “The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there´s no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do Will become forever what I´ve done”Life While You Wait by Wislawa Szymborska The life is not a rehearsal, it is the premiere.

The strategy Today I left behind the fear and concerns of the things I didn´t want to find, because at the time I faced them, that big monster that my imagination had created, faded. Instead, it became something more human, more tangible, more kind. That kindness is surrounded by a sense that everything that surrounds us is subjective and depends on the different angles. And, since time is also subjective, these angles become momentary and not definitive. A step to the right, a step to the left or a step a little bit forward changes that perspective from the one I had a few seconds ago. Looking for the path we need to find a strategy to move is sometimes a conscious strategy but many others it is an unconscious one. The important thing is the fact of looking for a path. Is this honest? At least it is valid to try to handle the cards that you have in your hand in the best possible way to find the path for yourself. “When we judge something to be bad or good, better or worse than something else, we are taking it as an example to aim at or to avoid. If we really couldn’t form opinions of this sort, we´d have no framework of comparison for our own policy. We couldn’t profit by others insights or mistakes. Without judgments about our own actions.” Trying out one´s new sword by Mary Midgley.

The uncomfortable I get up thinking about how incredible the mind is and how it generates these great stories about the future particularly, about circumstances that have not happened and that we imagine how they will be. Normally my mind generates tragic scenes. Scenarios almost like in a horror movie. My deepest fears. I continue to see every corner and find more details. Details that begin to give me flavors, colors, smells. Many times they are not pleasant to experience or even to know that they are there. “Although I had been writing against public flogging ever since it began, I wanted to watch it. I might go back to my typewriter and condemn it, but I did not want to miss the spectacle. This was an unpleasant Discovery to make about myself. A sorrowful, angry disgust with myself and the country l lived in thus became a future of my life”Sand and Foam by Kahlil Gibran But the mind is also capable of complicating a single detail to its fullest expression. So I must look at the detail to find answers or should I go to the essentials? To find the essence you have to go to the detail but to see the detail you also need to know the essence. As Desmond Tutu says in No Future Without Forgiveness this third way of life: “was consistent with a central feature of the African Weltanschauung- what we know in our languages as Ubuntu… It speaks of the very essence of being human.” The idea is to search for simplicity. For the essence…

Start to see little by little The frightening feeling I felt yesterday has faded as I began to enter every corner of this house, my house. Each reading begins to speak to me and to resonate in the situation I am living as if each word guided the other with the sole purpose of filtering possible ways. We meet to read some fragments of “Letters to A Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. I feel something similar to joy, the joy of having answers, of having the opportunity to simply stop and observe. “Dig into yourself for a Deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity…” “..You must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do noting but wait, and that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than anything else.” I begin to feel something that I had never felt before. I begin to recognize spaces that I had not opened or that were accumulated behind piles of different objects. “Life is in the right, always” Rainer Maria Rilke.