This is what I can tell you — it’s been a difficult weekend, full of quiet, a thick kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that shows up around that which has been unspeakable. I don’t, still, know how to get into the words for the story underneath. I don’t even know how to put into words the execution and nuances of the quiet.
I got a massage on Saturday, and I think I’m still moving into and through what she moved around. I’m filled, still, with gratitude for and towards anyone who chooses to do that sort of body work — what a generosity you offer with your hands.
There’ve been good conversations, too, time with friends, good&ridiculous movies, and a little bit of writing time. I’m finding my way back into my notebooks. This is what the process looks like.
I will say I’ve started the xmas cookie list for this year, and that brings some joy.
This is a poem for today, for this time, for this weekend. Find lines in there to act as prompts, as you are so called:
Equinox
Joy Harjo
I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.
I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.
I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.
Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead
and made songs of the blood, the marrow.
Equinox
Joy Harjo
I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.
I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.
I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.
Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead
and made songs of the blood, the marrow.
