The stories we write and the ones written about us
A glance into the most recent field research I am conducting + ritual perspectives for the moment we find ourselves in
Writing to you all from here, with the companionship of Roberto Bolano’s masterpiece “2666”
I write to you from a transparent desk, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, catching the last of the day’s sun while looking at the Acropolis in the city of Athens. It is warm here, a memory of summer’s balm on the skin and the scent of salt-slicked bodies making their way back home from the sea carried on low tide winds. This city, more than any I have yet been, still sings the Orphic hymns stamped into its Earth from the millenia old rituals performed to maintain the equilibrium between the gods and mortals, acknowledging that we are all responsible for maintaining the flow of communication between worlds: the visible and invisible, the human and more-than-human.
The deities receiving these devotions are not always benevolent, but operate with the same trappings of humanity that we find ourselves facing daily: wisdom, fear, love, destruction, passion, care, vulnerability. It is part of why I love them: not even the gods themselves can escape the contradiction of what it means to write the story of your life and to be controlled by forces that seem to sweep through you from outside of your own consciousness. So much of our time is spent unweaving the web we have spun only to go back to spinning according to a different blueprint, much the same way that the Orb Weaver spider takes down their webs to honor a passing eclipse, only to begin building home again once it passes: somehow knowing that in the space between deleting and beginning again, we might find a more harmonic hymn for us to write, to better tune the fork of the body to the key of building yourself into a web of your own belonging.
The Acropolis, as seen from my temporary apartment
Their stories are massive scales that we can map our own stories upon, in order to re-member how our own choices weave the fabric of the world. How we are always affected by, and always affecting, the rhythm of the narratives around us. They remind us that we are walking contradictions, full of volatile forces and kinetic energy that move us in unpredictable ways. In using our bodies to extend devotion toward their tales, we find an anchor point, an eye in the center of the storm, a way to more deeply hear through the confusion of that chaos and project ourselves into the world with clarity, however temporary. What I love about traditions of oral storytelling is that they re-light the flame of our knowledge of self-responsibility. How little slack we should really give ourselves when the chaos we point to and comment on is simultaneously our own chaos under a microscope. In the heat of our current world events, it feels important to be specific here. I am not saying that the pain of those removed from us should be ignored or that we should not raise our voices in alliance with those who are suffering. I am saying that, as we do so, we must simultaneously implicate ourselves, asking the question: “Where in my life might I be practicing the behaviors that I aim to denounce?” To me, this is one way of bringing ritual into the practice of modern daily life. Remembering to balance the scales, to harmonize within and without, to know that our own small microcosm is in dialogue with the macrocosm.
I also write from a kind of dream-fugue state, to explain these fragmented sentences and thoughts. My field research into ancient ritual practices always requires many days-long processes where I am absent from the rituals of modernity: no phone, no internet, no clock with hands to shape the time or to convince that there is anywhere else to be than in the presence of story, body, listening. Ritual demands the asking of a question that, I think, would serve us all well in our contemporary landscape of being always plugged in, on edge, ready to act, wanting to claim the spotlight, fueling the fires of our ambition: “What ways of knowing, being, and behaving have we lost?” and, its sibling question: “How might we summon them once more?”
A hall in which to practice ritual
There is much exciting talk around creating new structures of being, and yet it is easy to be chasing our own tails through repetitious investments in the patterns of behavior we are looking to rewrite: incessant reposting of traumatic images, fingers pointed away from ourselves and toward others, and spending a lot of time casting the roles of ally and enemy. Ritual reminds us of the power of storytelling as medicine for categorizing and classifying how we feel about what is happening to and around us, and invoking clear action that has the potential to shift the balance of power toward what is just.
Walking the hills of the Acropolis at the beginning of this journey, I looked underfoot to find ancient symbols baked into the walking path. Acropolis is not a singular building or even a location: they are ancient sites of worship that exist throughout Greece. The one we know best though is, yes, atop the city of Athens and it is a collection of sacred sites that includes the Parthenon, its most famous now-dissolving structure. How beautiful it is that even the ground underfoot was taken care of, imagined, inscribed with portals to open up worlds of imagination and invocation. In the week since that experience, I continue to acknowledge the need to find awe in the sanctity of the small things. With each day passing, I become more upset (it is a physical upset, an impending nausea, a disorientation. I note it as extreme and it is a reminder that this pattern I despise is rooted so deeply in my own body, ready for expulsion…) by an effect of globalization that I haven’t been able to name until now: the need to globalize of our identities. To me, this is the idea that our value is attached to the scope of our reach, to how many people we can be important to, how far our message can travel, how larger than life we can seem to be to other people. To convince them that we are living well, all the while performing a version of a life that may be very different from the one we are living.
Structures of devotion, wondering how one might build an inner temple as elaborate as one such as this
I circumscribe the ouroboros of this story to guide us back to the gods I mentioned in the beginning. This is what their stories help us to remember. That we are not the largest, most powerful, most praise-worthy beings. That there is a lot that is outside of ourselves that is worth that attention, and that we must turn ours toward that. Our own stories are very small, no matter how much they matter to us. We must tend them, write them, shade their details and clarify their characters, but we do not need everyone in the world to know them. The illusion that we do is only creating more chaos in a world that needs our participation in creating stability. So how do we do that? I am interested in this question at the ground level: How do you spend your days? Do you enjoy that? Is there something missing? Can you name what that is? What are your first thoughts in the morning? How do you close the day? What story are you writing?
These are some of the thoughts bubbling in the cauldron of this most recent research trip. I understand they are disjointed, not cemented, and in motion, but I think I am also realizing that part of my response to the above questions is to be satisfied with the constant flux of motion. That nothing is quite ever “ready to be shared” in the way that I’d like it to be, and always changing. Thoughts are just offerings across the winds of time, and I wanted to share these as they are still fresh, and it has felt important to begin to put onto paper the momentum of these thoughts as they move along. It is always helpful to know that there are eyes at the other end of this, so thank you for being here. I will write more soon. As always, I welcome your responses and will be so happy to read them.
Until then, sending you all a big hug.
A SUBSTACK UPDATE:
I am excited to be shifting all longer-form communications from Instagram to Substack, officially. I know that I’ve mentioned doing that for quite a while now, but it feels in good tiding with the ways my sails are shifting to focus on developing longer-format essays and sharing research, opportunities to connect in person and virtually, and upcoming offerings in this place that feels much more sincere.
This post is free for all subscribers. Paid subscribers will be receiving more frequent longer form thoughts, practices, embodiment and herbal offerings, and monthly Zoom class invitations. I deeply appreciate this support as, very practically, it helps to keep me afloat as I continue building this world of apothecary offerings, writing, fieldwork, dancemaking, and being able to support other artists who are involved in making my performance work — it certainly doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I am so grateful to you all, and am bowing in gratitude to those of you taking the time to read and also to those paid subscribers who are generously supporting this work. It all helps so much.