Thin Spaces

October 9th, 2025

Today began with the usual breakfast palavers, but was pleasantly ended with a cancellation of an afternoon appointment. I realised that I do not have any whole days at home, and I'm feeling out of sorts because I cannot find a ground of being, a state of relaxedness in the week, facilitated by spacetime of nothingdoing. So... I spend an hour and a half cleaning and tidying.. As my Mother once said, “I'm an active relaxer”. Well, at least now I can see the resources I have in my workspace, and can see the work I need to do.

A book called “The Atlas of Climate Change” was on my desk, unlooked at since it came home from the library last year (an unwanted child of Auckland City Libraries). As I was cleaning, I opened it up and it happened to offer me a double page spread of glacial crises across the world. One statistic said that the glaciers in Kenya may not exist by the year 2025. It was written in 2006. Next week we are to present a conference paper exploring our process of working with the US based Ice Preservation Institute. He tohu.*

Under the book was a sheet of paper with my handwriting on it, exploring essences – of myself and CI – written during covid times. I read what role I had ascribed to myself: “A consciously embodied resourcer of potential”. What does this mean? For me? For the world? I think I need to unpack this a lot more...

I had to clean my desk to remember that I've already done so much work. How can I shift my practices so that I can do “90% less”, as Chris Cahon, a CI practitioner in NY once told us in a class. What do I need to put in place, or leave behind, or get rid of? I think for a start, we need to clean out our house, and install new software of abundance with less.

Today's reading is from a “Hikoi ki Te Awa o Waitaki me ka tuhituhi or nehera/Rock art of our tipuna”, from 2005. One page, taken from the Ngā Tahu Claims Settlement, talks about the history of the Arai Te Uru waka, and Matakaea. There is a concluding paragraph speaking about mauri.

“The mauri of Matakaea represents the essence that binds the physical and spiritual elements of all things together, generating and upholding all life. All elements of the natural environment posses a life force, and all forms of life are related. Mauri is a critical element of the spiritual relationship of Ngai Tahu Whānui with the area.”

I am thinking about how particular places hold essences of culture in a way that is palpable to those who are initiated into the story, able to feel connection through whakapapa and inhabitation. Matakaea is a liminal space, is a 'thin' space, where mauri, whakapapa, atua and geography are able to be felt as a physical, energetic and spiritual entanglement.

Our sites performative expression, can be thin spaces, and they can activate thin spaces that already exist. (Better talk about thin spaces another time!) What potential do these places have, or our experience and conscious activation of them have, to act as nodes, or nodal interventions into our urban, hyper-connected, overactive, under-nourished lives?

*The conference was last week, as I am updating this post. We offered a visceral experience of a glacier disintegrating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU Maybe this video, this glacier, our bodies in the room together, these are thin places too.