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India at the Threshold

5/3/2021

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This is a photo from one of my favorite places - Jama Masjid, a huge mosque in the center of Delhi. I used to go here many mornings at dawn and sit in the courtyard meditating as the city was waking up. Today, this sacred place must be filled with a different kind of fervor. I need to write about this today, to share a wider perspective on what is happening in my homeland and why. This is the month when I’m asking for support for a project that I've been gestating for the past 3 years - Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision - which highlights the untold stories and visionary futures of Black, Indigenous and Immigrant Women of Color in the US. I'm sitting with the difficult reality of asking for money at a time when my homeland suffering, and in its own monumental rite of passage.

The reality is though, that India has been suffering for a long time now. Even those in India do not stop to notice. Everyone tries keep things going - because they must - even though all systems were failing. During my last 5-month journey to India 4 years ago, almost every day was spent in grief. I was heart-broken while those around were numb with the bustle of life in a country so dense with human beings that there’s almost never the luxury of having a full seat to yourself on a train. Everywhere you go, there are people. Millions of people.
​

I was grieving because of how close we were then to the brink of utter collapse. We were only one more drought away from a massive water and food shortage. One more hurricane away from a situation we would not be able to recover from. I didn't think it then, but - one more pandemic away - from being brought to our knees.

And I was angry at human beings' incapacity to recognize this imminent threat. But it isn’t any one person's fault. Not even Modi, India's current right-wing dictator. No. India - like so many nations formed through European imperial rule - had been drained of its resources, and derailed from its capacity for autonomous self-rule, for centuries. What is happening in India now is not merely a failure of modern democracy, or of one corrupt government.

What’s happening now is the failure of a long line of corrupt leaders and governmental structures wedded to global corporate rule— an abusive marriage that began with the East India Company in 1608. It is a failure of the capitalist system as a whole to provide for the basic needs of human beings in alignment with this planet. It is a failure of the collective human heart & mind to discern between false progress (all that glitters) to a real progress of which Ghandi spoke of in the last century— Swaraj— self-rule. Self-autonomy, self-subsistence. He advocated for a local and national ethic by which India would not be reliant on foreign powers for its basic needs and health— food, water, clothing, housing, and all industry.
Before the British, there was no poverty in India. The water was clean. The food was whole. Farmers were not fighting for the right to save seeds. People were not dying in masses because India was (and still is) home to two of the most ancient and comprehensive systems of healthcare in the world.

Yet rather than true autonomy, India chose another path— one that in many ways, was already chosen for it. That path has led us to where we are now— facing the mass deaths that were, quite honestly, impending. How ironic and tragic then, that people are dying for lack of oxygen- now bought and sold on the black market. The metaphor should not be lost on us: India cannot breathe. But our air quality, our quality of life, was already severely compromised. What is happening now constitutes a mass ethnic cleansing of those who have always existed on the margins in a colonial paradigm that never recognized them as people, but rather as raw labor for producing commodity.

Headed to Jama Masjid in the mornings, I learned from the people who lived on the street as I watched them get ready in the morning— how much dignity they cultivated within lives so profoundly marginal. It was not pity they were asking for. It was respect. Respect for every human life to live, to feed one’s family, to have somewhere on this earth to be at home. And although as a nation, India has failed to embrace the truth of Swaraj, its people have always been incredibly resilient, adaptable and persistent. Life wants to continue itself….

I am not heartbroken now. Because my heart was already broken. India was already broken. Now the question is: can that which has for so long been broken – ever be mended? The question of our times.
There is no excuse for any of this— for masses of people dying. But please do not point the finger at this moment in time, as though it were isolated from a long and complex history. Do not seek simplistic answers, because they will not work, and never have. Western comforts are paid for by Black and Brown bodies. It has been this way for centuries. Pity is not needed. Radical change is.

I needed to speak on this, because India is my homeland. And because I am creating a project this summer which is about visioning a more just and beautiful future for all of us, with dozens of Black and Brown women in the center. I see this work as being in solidarity with the people of India, and with the peoples of the Global Majority. I also recognize that it is a privilege to have, for lack of a better phrase - “first world” concerns - about fundraising for an art project, when my own country is dying. But this is not new. I have lived with a kind of persistent heartache for this land since I realized that what was broken in me wasn’t just mine— but a grief for the displaced lands whose minerals partially comprise my bones. Motherland.
Please make it through.

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Portrait of a Woman on Winter Soulstice

12/21/2020

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I journey fairly often
​into the underworld these days,
To learn how to see in the dark,
Because you can see things there
that you can’t see in the light.
I go so I can  remember all of what I find there, and still see it in the topside world.
I go to learn how not to be afraid of the creatures who come there as baby predators –
fox, wolf, fisher, eagle, rattlesnake.
Like Inanna, I go to learn that I can lose everything over and over,
Be stripped down, and still have it all.
So that I and we could be whole,
No part left out.
Nothing to prove.


I want to spend more of my life dancing,
And speaking in the language of my hands.
I want to spend more of my life writing
about the things that matter to me, to all of us- whether we know it yet or not.
I want the beauty I make everyday as an act of grace to be enough.
​Enough to remake this world,
Enough to start a revolution based in Beauty.
I want to spend my life - these remaining years - inhabiting the woman I am,
Who I came here to be, Fearlessly.
Living Life as a ceremony,
As the “Chosen, Chooser and the Choosing”,
Of this miracle, this grand trickery, this perfect imperfection that it is to be here -
As we who are continually re-membering ourselves from the Forgetting,
from believing & trying to be something we are not.
Until we surrender to what we are.


My ancestors come to me these days as a yantra of light and color,
Mirrored hallways leading the way back Home.
They come to me as mudras,
and as code syllables I am working to re-member clumsily with my tongue
so that it will hit the right synapses to make the magic work again.
My teachers are a beautiful old woman and a beautiful old man.
A mother, a father. A grandmother, a grandfather - whom I met as a maiden -
Generous enough to share the “inner meanings” of the words with me.
My ancestors come to me as the Earth and the trees,
and the birds on the branches, the mosses and mycelium underfoot. 
My ancestors come to me, to all of us,
as this eternal dance of planets.
This story so big we forget that our life is just one small movement -
a flip of the wrist.


This: a year of breaking apart at all the seams.
Of having my greatest fears come true:
The end of dreams, The end of illusions.
The end of holding onto something that didn’t work,
that perhaps barely ever did.
​Of surrendering pain as an identity.
Of coming to terms with my own brokenness -
not as something to fix, but as a place to begin gently unfolding.
Ache another teacher who reminds me not to forget -
Unfurling itself as a seed caught in the crook of a precarious ledge into a small banyan tree.
My wound is that resting place for the seed,
The seed is my ancestors’ prayer -
To be whole and to know love’s promise in this lifetime.
To grow in order to spill out yet more fruit and then seeds -
That might take root in other courageous rocky places,
In our shared landscape of Being.

As the sun returns slowly, I say
I am happy with the darkness,
I don’t want it to end too quickly,
I need to learn to see so well in the dark
That I can find my way on moonless nights inside and outside
Of the caves of my own mind.
​

Back home to where they've always been waiting for me
To make the offerings, sing the songs,
Do the small things that need to be done,
To sustain life for another circle dance around the Sun.



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Equinox Reflections:Restoring the Balance of Fire & Water

9/22/2020

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​This Fall Equinox, I'm reflecting on the balance of fire & water — the Masculine & Feminine — that has been disrupted by way of our patriarchal history over the last 4,000 years. While the West Coast has literally been burning from an excess of heat, an excess of masculine energy, we can recognize these unbridled fires as one of the long-term consequences of settler colonial culture. Our collective rite of passage at this time then, asks for a radical re-balancing of Masculine & Feminine energies — of fire & water — within us and on our planet.

The effects of climate change are the 
earth's efforts to re-balance extremes that are the result of the man-ipulation of fire & water through fossil-fuel based industry, petro-chemical production, and damming & irrigation which perpetuate land-degrading mono-agriculture.  


As humans, we are water beings, composed mostly of water. Indigenous cultures on the landmass we now call America — or Turtle Island — revere water as Feminine or female; a teacher who shows us the ways of dissolution, forgiveness, and surrender. She also guides us in the ways of power through persistence, patience, resilience and trust in the possibilities of renewal.

Now, we are being asked to honor and restore water - the Feminine - as a vital source of healing & knowledge that has been devalued, reduced to mere commodity in our era of "progress". We are asked to tame fire which has been hyper-monetized and harnessed for its destructive power through reactors, bombs, and industrial capitalism.

If we see fire & water as metaphors of our human experience, as the forces that fuel Life on planet earth, how then might we reframe our living? How would we reshape the foundational principles of our society? Can we recognize women + femme leaders who are rooted in the Feminine, as key to re-orienting society toward a paradigm of power-with & for all people. 

This Equinox, with so much at stake now than ever before, let us remember that water is our lifeline, the connector between all things —past, present and future. May we have clear sight to see and honor the mysteries of water & fire, to choose another way forward that is the colonial story of power-over, but of power-with - a path guided by the wisdom of the Feminine because without water, we cannot live.

​May the waters come where they are most needed. May the fires within us and this world be quelled by the remembrance of balance— our true nature.

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How To Show Up As An Ally: 20/20 Vision For These Times

6/11/2020

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As our collective rite of passage continues with the uprising of the Black Liberation movement, we at The Rites of Passage Project stand along with our 20 collaborating Black + African-Diaspora artists in affirming that #blacklivesmatter, and that another more just and beautiful world is possible.

We honor the lives of those who were recently killed by the ignorance of oppression - George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmad Aubrey - as well as the innumerable ancestors of Black folks in America. Thankfully, in these last weeks there has been an acceleration in consciousness for white and non-black folks to stand in solidarity with the #blacklivesmatter movement. Yet, white people have a much self and community educating to do before we can work together to truly able to dismantle white supremacy. 

We must remember that any true movement is one by and for the People.  As such, the movement isn't against people, but against life-alienating oppressive structures. If ALL lives are ever to truly matter, then we must have 100% dedication to dismantle the historical injustices that have been perpetuated under this country's Constitution - one which legitimized the erasure of Native peoples and lifeways, and the enslavement of African-Diaspora peoples with 1 enslaved person equaling three fifths of a white person, and under which Indigenous people, Black people,  and all women were denied the right to vote or participate in public elections, in short denied the right to determine their own futures.

These times ask of us to cultivate 20/20 Vision - clear sight - of our shared past and present; a wholistic look at how the "Dominator" Paradigm has been destroying our world. The institutionalized systems of oppression that we today call "white supremacy culture", "patriarchy", "capitalism",  and "neo-colonialism", are not new. They are merely new titles for the Dominator Paradigm that has been in existence for at least the last 2,500+ years, around the globe.

At this time, scientists predict that we may have 10 to 15 years before total ecological and systems-wide collapse. This collapse has already been happening in places in the Global South + East.  And now in the US, we have had our first glimpse of how little it takes to initiate a systems collapse. Those with privilege have simply chosen not to see - in the same way that white folks in the US have not chosen to truly acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression of black people, and their own comfort and complicit silence which make such oppression possible. Yet remedying this situation - ending white supremacy - will take a deep surrender of multiple privileges - because white privilege is interlocked with money, and access to resources such as education & healthcare, land, healthy food, clean air & water. While these things should be basic rights of all living beings, they have not been for a very long time. It's been so long, that most people are unable to question the interlocking systems of domination that are the very foundations of what constitute a "normal life". 

In a sense, we are each complicit in the destruction of our Earth, our ecosystems, and our futures through the Dominator Paradigm. We are each complicit in, and contributing to- systems that enslave human beings the world over, and "loot"/extract the abundance of our Earth, which is our shared and finite inheritance. The greatest grief is that so few of us have options to choose differently because of generational structural oppression.


In order to truly dismantle systems of oppression, I believe we need to do so both within and without - to DECOLONIZE from the INSIDE-OUT. This means that we also need a new - and yet more ancient - Paradigm of Partnership - as Riane Eisler writes of in her book Sacred Pleasure - one of mutual respect, care and interdependence. The way we tell the stories about our past will determine what future we create. And in order to truly create an equitable, resilient and regenerative future, we need equitable, resilient and regenerative stories. 

At a time when so much of our understanding is still compartmentalized, Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision creates space for the intersection of multiple liberation movements "under one roof".  By bringing with us long-saved ancestral seeds of resilience, and songs, dances, grief and poems of strength, collectivity and eloquence. And even while the world continues to break, we are slowly and quietly building this dream. The dream of a fertile house, and more so - the dream of a vibrant, flowering future for our children's children. 

As we continue forth in these heart-breaking times, let us remember that the collective fight for liberation has been being waged a long time, and is bigger than any one of us. When we feel impatient, or loose courage, let us humble ourselves and look to the wisdom of abolition and civil rights movements, Indigenous peoples movements, and the feminist movements, that have been at the fore-front of cultural and political Resistance, Awakening and Change-making for centuries. May we connect with the blossoming resistance outside that can help sustain our inner and collective journey toward freedom. 

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We Are In A Collective Rite Of Passage: Entering The Chrysallis

3/30/2020

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The  Chrysallis is often evoked as a "rite of passage" symbol embodying: DEATH & TRANSFORMATION via dissolution
 
Right now - both personally and collectively - we are given an opportunity to go within and dissolve...

Dissolve our self-concepts of who we are and what we're here for.

Dissolve our attachments to our plans and to business as usual.

Dissolve our concepts about how society, political structures, and the "economy" function, and underlying it all - what we value.

Dissolve our idea of being separate from everyone else.

Dissolve, Dissolve, Dissolve....

It's messy, its painful, its straight-up not pleasant, and fittingly, its something we do inside our own cocoon. We loose control. Because the process is beyond us. It's meant to break down and dissolve  our actual ego structure. Its mean to change us entirely.

The danger inherent in any rite of passage - which ultimately is always about death & transformation - is to attach to an out-dated, narrow definition of ourselves - one premised on separateness and scarcity. Whether its the feeling that we won't have enough, or the unexamined base-assumptions of white supremacy, money or property as security, or any such limiting ideology.

On the other hand, the invitation is to dissolve and to source ourselves from the deepest and widest, most life-affirming truth we can. To expand our sense of self to include greater empathy and compassion for ourselves and for everyone else, for the heartache and struggles of others, and to dismantle the privileges that keep us "safe" but never secure.

Its tempting for me - for many of us - to identify with the suffering as "us". But in the words of adrienne marie brown, "
That’s just not it. It’s not us. The suffering is not what we’re called to attend to… We’re not meant to suffer alone. We’re meant to experience pleasure and togetherness..."

So what can we do while in the cocoon? Let go and Feel. If we lean into it, dissolution can also be Pleasure-able, Erotic, Ecstatic. It offers us a  container in which to die to our old self, and connect with an expanded sense of self that's not separate from anything or anyone else.  

May we embrace the wisdom of the chrysallis.
May we transform into  beings who take freedom for wings.

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2020: The year of Womanifestation

1/22/2020

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2020 is the YEAR of WOMANIFESTATION.

This photo was taken sometime back when my dear friend Heather Fisch asked me to be The High Priestess, an archetype close to my soul. To me The High Priestess, along with The Empress, are the archetypes of womanifestation. They create/ birth as extensions of the fecund earth, dancing in the non-dual union of dark + light - tending the compost and the garden, alive in the underworld womb as well as the topside world where we eventually (sometimes after years) harvest the flowers + fruits of our labors. Its good magic, whole magic, humble magic.

As i came upon this photo today, I remembered the long-ago story of the necklace I'm wearing in it. Its made of typewriter keys, and was given to me, wrapped in newspaper - by a grunge girl wearing all black, on a bus in Seattle around midnight when I was alone and lost; she had placed the bundle quickly into my hands before rushing out the door. She was my angel-witch; who'd been wearing it earlier when I had stepped onto the bus without enough money, feeling shakey and scared as I asked how to get where I needed to go and whether she and her friend could give me some change (they did). I had told her how beautiful the necklace was and did she make it (yes she had). The typewriter keys are metaphors of the Word, and of speaking one's truth. That gift gave me all the hope i needed, that I wasn't lost after all out in a big city alone at night. I found my way to where i needed to go. It remains with me as a symbol of Feminine power + resilience, crafted by the hands of an unknown woman.

THIS is womanifestation. Other women + femmes + people holding space for, cheering on, lifting each other up. It exists in contrast to the obsession that New Age white-washed culture has with "manifestation" - one that reeks of privilege, light-polarization and isolation: the idea that if we as individuals just think good thoughts, all will go our way. Womanifestaton is rather about honoring the mystery of life, of the Divine Feminine and inter-connectedness. Its being a conduit of sustenance and reciprocity. Because when she gave me the necklace, it was healing for me. But it was also healing for her to give it. It was an honorable giving and receiving.

As we approach the New Moon in Aquarius, its time to clear my desk, my mind, and set new intentions for this next cycle. The High Priestess has all she needs, not just within herself, but with the fruit and seeds of the Earth (held in the pomegranate), and with the Great Book of the World/ Her Life in her left arm. Wearing good witch magic around her neck.

There is a lot to become womanifest for me, for Rites of Passage in the coming months. For some folks, it seems like an impossible task. That's because it is. Its impossible for me to "make it all happen". The only way it can happen is through the union of sincere effort/ intention, magic + surrender, with a little (or a lot of) help from my friends (and kind strangers)! Reminding myself of this now as i prepare to step through the next portal.
​
Thank you Lisa Vollmer for this photo, to Heather for the invitation, and to Kifu Faruq for introducing me to womanifestation! Its an honor to womanifest with you, and with all the other incredible women, femmes + people in my life right now.
#womanifestation #2020vision #faith #resilience #sustenance

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A 20/20 Vision Anthem

1/1/2020

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This is the time that they'll speak of us in the future, saying:
"They Remembered".

We Re-member Ourselves Now
as whole-bodied, soft-fleshed water people.
We reclaim our hearts,
and our tender, round infant-faced memories,
from empty pre-packaged promises,
from the ache of isolation.
We steal back our freedom and our future from the numbed fists of black-oil gods,
from the digitized world we mistook for reality.

We breathe new life into the places we've ravaged in our relentless quest,
in our rest-less-ness.
We come Home,
finally to Rest.
Right where we are
with the great weight of the Grief of the World.

We save the seeds that have been passed on to us for thousands of years,
And plant them, water them with our tears-
Seeds that have kept their own wisdom of how to grow in places that've become thirsty.

We learn to speak again words of Beauty and of Kindness,
To value what's alive over what's dead,
in a world that's far slower,
where joy is commonplace,
and each of us is sovereign.
Where the land remembers itself green,
and our multiplicity begins to mend its way back
from the edge of extinction.
​
Let these be our teachers now:
Flowers. Mycelium. the Forest underground + canopy.
The infinite family of our extended relations.
We are not alone.
We are the Once and Future Vision
Of Our Ancestors

​
https://www.ritesofpassageproject.org/2020vision
thank you to Janine Strong for this photo:)

​
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Announcing Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision

12/21/2019

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It’s with a big deep breath, that I announce at long-last: RITES OF PASSAGE: 20/20 VISION!!!!!!
This project is an offering of clear sight into our Collective past, our present and our potential future,
Revolutionary Art, Activism + Initiation for the New Century by Women + Femmes of Color
Live: August 14- 23, 2020
ritesofpassageproject.org/2020vision


For those of you who experienced the first Rites of Passage in 2013, this is the next evolution. 20/20 Vision was born out of my need to speak to a broader scope of the feminine experience in America, with a focus on the voices of WOC, with all NEW "Rooms of Cure".

Now is Our Time.

Creating this project involves learning how tp embody the radically beautiful values of this Project. How do we truly CO-CREATE a living village - to sew together our losses and our triumphs, our tender broken places with the bright red threads of healing that we each are carrying: You are my teacher. I am your teacher. Together, we are learning. And THIS is Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision: 80 women of color + allies from around the US. Creating a potent space for the stories that have gone unheard, and for the Medicine WE ALL NEED.

In the words of one of my personal heroines - with whom I share the same ancestral homeland, and love of eloquence + rebellion:

         “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To               shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance,              our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the                ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.....Remember this: We be many and they be few. They     
            need  us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
            On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                            - Arundhati Roy

Ultimately Rites of Passage is meant to speak to all of us, regardless of our background or gender. We all need to nurture new cultures of remembrance on the Earth, and community containers for initiation.
This website is a work of art itself that I'm so excited to share with you. My hope is that it, and this project, can be space for us all to remember the Resilience we each carry.

Please feel free to share the project in your circles. We welcome all kinds of support: a HOUSE, artists, production folks, volunteers, MONEY, artist housing. It takes many webs of support to build this:)
Thank you for reading, for sharing, for breathing in this new world together.
#ritesofpassage #2020vision
#wearetheonceandfuturevisionofourancestors
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Self-Portrait: Woman With Her Hair on Fire

8/9/2019

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​This photo’s caption should read: “woman with her hair on fire.” I have a big reveal coming…Its kind of like being pregnant (note kind-of, hence I am NOT pregnant) when you don’t tell anyone until the 2nd trimester, because you don’t want to jinx it. Can a woman be pregnant with something other than a child? Yes of course: alternate fertilities. Right around the time I finally felt ready to become a Mom to a person, the Universe said “no, we’ve got other plans for you, you know just what they are – so get to work.” I guess I’m pretty fertile…but I haven’t been ready to share, and I feel nervous, and so have been in a very prolonged early gestation. ​We say this is Leo rising: its never been done before in this way, she doesn't know how to do it, and doesn’t even try to obtain permission to do it. Add to this, she’s actually pretty shy and self-conscious about doing it at all. She just does it because she must and because she wants to. At best: trail-blazing. At worst: trial by fire. In Shamanic Astrology, we say that the true nature of Leo rising is “the playful 2-year old” – creating anything she desires because she can. A friend once wrote of me that I am “sort of like a woman with her hair on fire. She has no choice but to do what she does with her whole heart and as fast as she can. She is her work, and her work is her growth.” (I think this is part of the answer as to why my hair is so white! (maybe you were wondering;) But the REAL question for any such person as myself is: how do 
                                                                                                    I be a channel that is continually nourished?
                                                                                                    How can I “do” while “be-ing”?
 
I can't afford to be so fast anymore. I need to learn to slow down, put out the fire out in my hair, but somehow keep it alive in my heart. Nature creates, and we are part of nature, and so must create. Yet that drive to create can suck the very life out of us, if it's not also flowing back into us. Much like a woman making a baby, and then feeding that baby, it's easy to become depleted. And being alive and creating life is a kind of long-term lease we have with the Universe.

As a wise woman recently shared with me - we pay a price for wisdom, of which white hair and wrinkles are outward metaphors. We pay some of our youth, our innocence, so that we might know eternity and grace. Aging is a blessing. But what these last years have taught me, are teaching me - is that without my own sanity and well-being, without my own continuous prayer which is pleasure, which is rest, then the reason for "making" becomes obsolete. And without nurturing my own healing, what can I offer others? This beauty created outside of me, doesn't need to be.

In all honesty, I haven’t mastered the art of creating my work and feeding myself adequately in the process. The way I used to create wasn’t sustainable. I know I can’t do things the old way, but I don’t yet know the new way. It;s too easy for me to stay up till 3am writing. And rest is foundational; I’m working on my foundation. My journey to Peru was one in search of soul-body-mind replenishment. As a pre-requisite, I had to relinquish my notions of a “self”, including as a maker, and just be in a long rite of passage. Much of that time wasn’t peaceful; it was often lonely and difficult, but immeasurably precious. Yet while it’s a blessing to have a moment of peace in a remote cave, one has eventually to enter fully back into the world of Samsara and remember what it is to be inside that cave in the middle of the crazyiness.

So, it's been nearly 7 years since I decided I would make ritual + theatre my primary avenues of service and craft. I've broken through, broken-down, burned bright, burnt-out and journied far beyond the edges of my “self”. I used up all the golden fuel of my 20s on a dozen different lifetimes lived in that decade alone, as an anti-establishment rebel with a cause: i.e. lover of Life, Beauty + Resurrection of the human heart, at-tempting solo bicycle tours and generally getting myself in a bunch of unwanted trouble. I don't have any money, awards or fame to show for all this. But I do have some beautiful memories of crafting Beauty out of my own and our shared grief. If so much is dying that’s worth grieving, then I needed to grieve it and create ways for us all to, as well as somehow lift up our hearts in a world that’s often times  disappointing and cruel. If we are so separated in this modern compartmentalized world, I needed to feel intimacy with others in that “village” way that only ritual + theatre provided me. If my heart could give birth, it would create art in adoration of the Erotic that refuses to die by capitalism, convention or fear (my own and that of the world.)
 
Now, I'm called once again to create. And even my Leo Rising is terrified at the thought of it; meaning I don't know if I have what it takes to do this. I seem to have lost the blessing of the care-free-ness of youth and a certain un-daunted-ness by what most people regard as “impossible” or at best “un-realistic”. I’ve always set out to create something, and trusted (more or less) that somehow it would happen, and it always has. So this must be another test of faith. In moments I doubt my capacity to be a channel for pure magic: like pulling rabbits out of hats and pushing babies out of vaginas. (Because we are talking about metaphoric babies really, not just rabbits.) I mean something that could possibly LAST beyond “me” or my lifetime. For this I will need abundant universal energies made manifest into 3D: i.e. grand hither-to unimagined sums of money + un-paralleled real-time support (and a lot of generous people have helped me over the years, I don’t forget you. And here it is, all over again: hit the refresh button.) I ask myself “Will I go the way of faith again, because it’s the only real thing? Do I believe I’m worthy of abundance? Do I believe this creation is worthy of support? Do I believe it's simply the future memory of my ancestors coming into form, and therefore, its fruition inevitable?”
 
I don’t feel ready, but like they say, you’re never fully prepared to have a baby. And it's been calling me a while now, and I don't want to ignore it or postpone it forever until the moment years from now when I may actually be ready (because in that sense, tomorrow never comes, tomorrow is never promised.) Is this because I'm stubborn or because of destiny + dharma? The more I am alive, the more I get hip to the fact that I’m just an instrument through which my ancestors breath desires to flow. A good instrument though, requires care and re-tuning. My creations are best when I am in full communion. I become me. And who is me? But the ensemble, or the river, or the wind, or the full and empty rooms of a house overflowing with eloquence? 

photo credit: Janine Strong

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Dear Womb Bearers of Our Enlightened Family...

5/19/2019

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Picture
​This is my dancing, singing, seasonally-flowering uterus. It’s also my crying, raging, mourning uterus. It holds deep, almost unbearable, ancient pain – memories still surfacing from the wounding within my lineage, and of lives beyond this one – memories of the power to create life and countless births, memories of the losses of life and of countless failed and purposely aborted births, memories of babies taken from me against my will – memories never spoken yet never fully forgotten.

Who else will remember these stories? Who else will bear/ liberate this pain? My womb, my uterus remembers. My uterus re-members itself from the fractured disaporic herstory of my peoples, of our shared peoples. These are the stories I carry. Such stories, we carry.

Who else will bear/ liberate this pain than us – wombmen and womb-bearing beings? Who else will unknot the centuries of oppression? Who else will bear forth the future of the human species – to renew Creation again and again through the eye of a needle?

Who else will reclaim our powers of creation and death? Who else will choose to dance and sing anyway – even in the face of great ignorance – because we have the privilege and the responsibility to – entrusted to us by generations of women who could not dance or sing at all?

The challenges facing us as now are not new, but we are closer to a Shared Liberation. Let us not forget in these times of Transition, that we are but the next generation in long lines of women and beings who worked to remember and who forgot their own power, and whose powers were repressed or manipulated. We are the ones our ancestors are praying for to wake up – we, the children of lineages seeking to remember our origins within an inconceivably vast Cosmic Womb. Let us not forget that we are connected inseparably beyond the boundaries of contrived nation-states, in a Womb-Wide Web.

That the majority of countries still find it acceptable to regulate the bodies of women: abortions are illegal (or illegal except in extreme situations) in much of the world. Let us not forget that the forces of ignorance are still present, that the last vestiges of a dying order are grasping for power. Yet, let us not forget that they will inevitably lose this false power. And that the only true power is beyond “us” – the Power that created my life, your life, all Life, and that we as womb-bearers are the perennial guardians of this Power within the human species, and that no man-made decree can change this. Let us not forget that the forces of ignorance and fear live within all of us, and that without compassion, liberation is not possible.

​Today as I bleed, cradled by mountains older than these struggles of our human species over creation and death, I remember that all is not lost. All is not a fight against, but rather a continual Collective Birthing towards Truth. We are the Earth and the Earth will always be victorious. In the words of Starhawk: “We are the rising of the Earth. We are the shifting of the ground. We are the seeds that take root, when we bring the fortress down.”

​http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-where-abortion-is-illegal/

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    Pooja Prema

    Re-membering the threads between Nature & Humanity through the written & spoken word.

    storytelling, ritual, diaspora, homecoming, decolonization
    earth-based 
    remembrance,
    imagination,  wombmen, embodiment, resilience,
    resisting the war against the imagination, non-dual political inquiry, reclaiming the commons, indigenosity, communitas, village building, nurturing a culture of place

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