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Karinaland River 

 

The Karinaland River blog you are reading at this moment came about by accident. A year ago, my cello teacher Bob Ng took beautiful and evocative b&w stills of the Memorial Mural. Then to my surprise, he set up this blog with the memorial stills as a platform for me to continue and write: 

https://blmmuralproject.blogspot.com/

Initially I was nervous. Would I be able to find the right kind of voice for it? As soon as I started, it easily flowed to my surprise. A new way of writing. I called it my blog adventure, allowing for the innate playfulness and curiosity which have been my lifelong companions. In my view, life wants to express itself, live itself ­– like a river. Conceiving the blog as a River helped.  Here my life’s different themes & stories could perhaps organically interweave into one stream. Last fall the daily short entries changed to bi-weekly stories, and I started using visuals for each entry. A few months ago, we renamed the blog Karinaland River. Here is my third entry from a year ago, June 30th, 2021:

https://karinalandriver.blogspot.com/2021/06/last-saturday-just-as-i-am-starting-to.html

 

For the whole blog, I envisioned certain threads submerged at times, then resurfacing, braiding themselves into a winding River. Shimmering with the colors and currents of my 50 years of work in dance, theater, filmmaking and Mind-Body teaching.  Social observations and commemorations, friends and family, continents and cultures. Languages, poetry and art. Now, past and future. All could find a place here, in gurgling rivulets, whirlpools, cross currents. Sometimes pensively pooling, or ebbing and flowing – like the stream of life itself.  

I never had a career – I was, and still am, just a working artist. To me, my personal growth and life, art projects, films and collaborations, are all one. Listening and following the River of Life has led me to unexpected, sometimes sudden, twist and turns, like leaving my birth country and language when age 27. Always, there were inevitable callings, and mysteries. Often swimming against the current was required. Then again, I would be pulled ahead by the deeper demands of destiny. Different influences, interests, and fields would form a whole only in retrospect. Looking back, seeing the hidden threads throughout, it all would start making sense, and give me a feeling of belonging. Within this River of Destiny, I was shedding skins, evolving, maturing, being molded, and at times radically transformed. Never could I have imagined that a blog would make this River palpable. Thank you, Life – thank you to Bob, the blog’s instigator – and thank you to all the many people in and throughout my life!!! 

 

Today sending Happy Birthday wishes to my sister Dinah! 

She lives in Göttingen, Germany, I have written about her before: 

https://karinalandriver.blogspot.com/2021/11/on-weekend-it-was-time-to-speak-with-my.html 


Comments

Alex K said…
River, what a beautiful, bountiful and capacious metaphor. Your vision of your life and life is inspiring to me; offering and inviting with a generosity of spirit. There is so much stirring and being revealed in these times we are living through. And one of the things I appreciate about your blog is how you addresss the reality of the pain and suffering that is present without excluding the depth, play and grace that are also true. I was particularly moved in this entry by how you describe coming to see "the hidden threads throughout, it all would start making sense, and give me a feeling of belonging."
July 2, 2022 at 2:25 PM
aysha said…
The winding river you write about here is so palpable as I read and experience the blog. I am thrilled by the flowers, the sun in the garden, the backyard cottages, the warm summer nights and the cool fog... and I know that we will have to face police killing again, we will have to face US imperialism, settler capitalism, worker exploitation, gender violence, and all of the other horrors of US society and of the world today that partially inform the Black Lives Matter movement and the mural that inspired this blog. And you write of your teacher Bob taking the beautiful photos which needed such a beautiful blog space for dialogue... it is almost unbearable to me that beauty and horror must live side by side in the same river. Sometimes all I can do is feel.
July 2, 2022 at 8:07 PM
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