Over the years, I've started to pull elements of ritual into my writing practice. By "ritual," I mean things that help me center, the way we might read a child a bedtime story or hold a warm cup of tea. They help me shed the remnants of my day, the time-travel ruminations, the laundry lists of things undone, so I can arrive to a blank page.
One of these rituals is to call in the directions--East, South, West, North, Above, Below, and Within. This might be as simple as closing my eyes and meditating on each direction, or as involved as physically moving my body to face them, feel the quality of their light on my skin, ask them to join me in my writing practice, invite them to speak through me. This might take three minutes, or thirty. When leading a writing circle, I might prompt the group to speak what comes to mind with each shift in direction. Often, this becomes a sort of spontaneous prayer or collaborative poem. It's also a way to warm up the connection between our instinct and our voice.
The first time I did this was in full-moon circle. The ritual felt like home. As a white woman of European descent, though, I worried about appropriation. But here's the thing. Finding ourselves on the map--connecting to a sense of place and cycles and time, and eventually arriving within our own hearts--is something innate. It's an act we can all relate to on a felt level. And, I think, a poetic one. I've since learned that aspects of connecting to the directions aren't just linked to indigenous traditions, but also pagan, Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and others. That is to say, it's common sense (literally speaking), and common ground.
Below is an ever-evolving freewrite on the directions--a living meditation of sorts. It's a story of how I experience the directions, and how they connect with the cycles outside me and within.
And because I believe that the two vital steps in exploring our voice through writing are to 1) put words to paper and 2) speak them out loud, there's also a recording.
Thanks for being here.
East.
She greets the rising sun, as morning dawns across her dreams, nudging the thoughts that trace the edge of wherever she was before she got here. She chose this, walked out across the ether into this specific dawn. Eastern Spring. First light after winter’s long gestation. Light of birth. Light of breath. A single leaf pushes up through the soil. The sky orange, soft, and glowing. Prisms of morning dew, a world in every drop. Infinite perspectives perched upon a single blade of grass. She steps into the open field, carving a path through the mist as she goes, the sun’s rays slanting quietly beside her.
South.
She lifts her head, taking the world in. She breathes, deep and long. Smell of sun on bare skin. Her shadows shorten and work their way inward, tugging at her feet as they trace the shape of the land. She is curious, passionate, alive. She migrates, seeks warm-blooded connections, reaches toward her living ancestors, who have stretched into similar awakenings. She is the high noon sun; she is effervescence, the fulfillment of dreams. She is snake, sunning herself on the sand, content in her own existence. She is maiden, grasping her bow and quiver, ready to face the day.
West.
Shaking the sun from her shoulders, she steps into the boundless unknown, light filling in behind her, edging her spirit onward. She is the undiscovered, the feral, the untamable heart. She is the soaring victories and gaping descents. The learning that comes with the falling. The rising call of wisdom. She gathers medicines as she goes. She is the plants that teach her, speaking from the edges of paths—both well-worn and freshly carved. Paths she has mapped herself, and those that have closed in behind her in the depths of the deep, dark wood. She speaks to the trees and feels as though her own leaves kiss the sky. The sun dips slowly past the horizon like a great, autumnal yawn. She bends, ever so slightly towards it, loosening her posture, gathering her wisdoms in. She is squirrel, storing up mouthfuls for winter. She is rock, progressively rising toward the sky, and then back again. She is light descending. A dusting of dusk, carrying wisdoms, scattering them over the land.
North.
She feels now. First frost. Air sharpened. Inhales deeply, breath chilling the back of her throat. She is somewhere between the deep black night and the pink of a tender morning. She turns inward, towards the incubating hibernations of thought. Towards all she has learned since East’s birth, South’s quickening, West's lessons—this Great Walk of Life. The midday sun is low now. Like introspection. Like atoms slowing in wonder at their own existence. She is time, staring at her own mirrored reflection. She is the soft nudge between the dream world and the waking. She is mother bear, shifting in her den. She is the bear cub within, stirring in a dark and blood-warmed womb. In the depths of the North, she is both inner peace and wanting.
Above.
This life now led; the circle complete, its first or final round, or somewhere in between. She tilts her head skyward, to the endless expanse of heavens, and marvels at the ways she has been held. Earth suspended, spinning across invisible strings, rich with silence and noise and everything between. She is smoke rising. She is gratitude. She is spaciousness, full and yet unseen. She is the breeze that brushes her cheek as she looks to the moon, noticing how the sky itself reflects her. She is starlight with outstretched hands, reaching across the spirals of time.
Below.
She feels the ground beneath her. Soil between her toes, mixing with the atoms of skin. Life spreading into itself, into fertile ground over bedrock and molten beginnings, held together by the gravity of potential dawns. Ground that can bear the weight of oceans, the whisp of a human foot, the slither of worm, the cut of a paw or a shovel to plant, burrow or entomb. She feels the warm hum of compost, all its losing and becoming, and is One.
Within.
Then, silence, the coming together of worlds. She is stardust. She is deity. She is sun. She is moon. She is wind. She is the bowels of the earth, sifting experience into medicines that reach life toward light. She is light, fire of existence, spark of creation. La Chispa. She is burning to be born. She is her ancestors, her own meanderings, one with Creator, her own personal dawn. She is bear awakened, bear on the hunt, bear satiated, bear asleep, bear in the light of the distant stars. She is her sister, seated beside her, all the Truth within. She looks to her own heart and finds it. Wisdom of lifetimes, only some of them her own. She bends her head in reverence.
Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash.
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