The second night in Yosemite was magic –
\ni decided to sleep in open air
\nnear to the tree next to our tents;
\nthrough its branches:
\na view on the stars and the sky.<\/p>\n
I found out about Yosemite’s cemetery, where some of the Indians who used to live here, the Ahwahneechee, were buried alongside some of the new Americans who campaigned for making Yosemite into a national park. I wanted to go to the cemetery, but there was no time. An immense need to find a material site where to mourn for what has been called the Californian genocide. Of all the things that i find painful in this place, there’s the tragedy of what is done to memory, the strong sense of a hardly acknowledged violent whiping out of people, culture and history. As Olivia said when we were talking back in Antwerpen not so long ago: you can feel that kind of violence in the land. In Santa Cruz there is no place to commemorate – what remains of the Mission is a painful site. And of course a small cemetery remains a merely symbol but at least it is a material one. Yes, one can mourn with the wind and sun, the water and the earth. But as Sara said: as attributing Native Americans with a vague spirituality that is everywhere and nowhere has gone hand in hand with taking away the materiality of lives, livelihoods and land, it is not enough. What happened to this land on which we walk?<\/p>\n
In the absence of a more material way of mourning, we read a poem (once more by Drew Dillinger) that second night in Yosemite.<\/p>\n
————————————————–
\nI write words to catch up to the ancestors.
\nAn angel told me the only way
\nto walk through fire
\nwithout getting bured
\nis to become fire.
\nSome days angels whisper
\nin my ear as I walk
\ndown the street and I fall in love
\nwith every person I meet,
\nand I think, maybe this
\ncould be a bliss
\nlike when Dante met
\nBeatrice.
\nOther days all I see
\nis my collusion
\nwith illusion.
\nGhosts of projection
\nmasquerading
\nas the radiant angel
\nof love.
\nYou know I feel like
\nthe ancestors
\nbrought us together.<\/p>\n
I feel like the ancestors
\nbrought us here and they expect great things.
\nThey expect us to say what
\nwe think and
\nlive how
\nwe feel and follow the hard paths
\nthat bring us near joy.
\nThey expect us
\nto nurture
\nall<\/i> the children.<\/p>\n
I write poems to welcome angels
\nand conjure ancestors.
\nI pray to the angels of politics
\nand love.
\nI pray for justice sake
\nnot to be relieved from my frustrations,
\nat the same time burning sage and asking ancestors for patience.
\nI march with the people
\nto the border
\nbetween nations
\nwhere
\neverything stops
\nexcept
\nthe greed of corporations.<\/p>\n
Thoughts like comets
\ncalculating the complexity
\nof the complicity.<\/p>\n
There is so much noise in the oceans
\nThe whales can’t hear each other.
\nWe’re making them crazy,
\ndriving dolphins insane.
\nWhat kind of ancestors are we?<\/p>\n
Thoughts like comets
\nleaving craters
\nin the landscape of my consciousness.<\/p>\n
I pray to ancestors and angels:<\/p>\n
Meet me in the garden.
\nMeet me where spirit walks softly
\nin the cool of the evening.
\nMeet me in the garden
\nunder the wings of the bird
\nof many colors.
\nMeet me in the garden
\nof your longing.<\/p>\n
Every breath
\nis a pilgrimage.<\/p>\n
Every
\nbreath
\nis a pilgrimage
\nto you.<\/p>\n
I pray
\nto be
\na conduit.<\/p>\n
An angel told me:
\nthe only way to walk through fire–
\nbecome fire.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The second night in Yosemite was magic – i decided to sleep in open air near to the tree next to our tents; through its branches: a view on the stars and the sky. I found out about Yosemite’s cemetery, where some of the Indians who used to live here, the Ahwahneechee, were buried alongside … Continue reading “angels and ancestors”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}