I’ve been sitting on this piece for months and it finally feels like the Time to share it, right now, Today. Today I am performing, my own work, solo, for a public audience, for the first time, ever. Today, on this Full Moon. Today, exactly 9 months from the full moon I wrote about in this piece. Today, on the June full moon, wrapping up the tale/tail that grew out of last year’s June new moon. At long last I give you the final installment of The 13th Rite~
***
September 23: Goodbye (Cemetery + Goodbye to the Lake)
Time snacked on itself as I prepared for my departure from my homelands & homepeoples, and return to the mystery in the southwest. Steadily, September was disappeared by a peckish giant. During this span I eked out one last journey: a final trip to see my beloveds in western Mass. I’d kept delaying at the behest of my waning energy. My capacity for summer and frolicking and driving to and fro wobbled as wide as a metronome as the Fall Equinox strode up. September 17th, I finally made it.
I met Lu first, on my favorite rock on the river’s edge. We’d recently traversed some polyamory uncomfies and I think both felt a little anxious-relieved by our reunion. Lu arrived. In essence, we matched. Both in black and white, in sneakers, with fun eye makeup. Sporty Spice with a hint of hipster-queer glam. Our style choices mirrored; our smiles did too. Lu took pictures of me on my Great Rock, before and during and after. In between, we sat together, on the smooth plain of her cool back, the water engrossed in a continuous cleansing ritual at our feet, and were just two. We softened and opened our petals. We were young, a bit, and excited, too. We dared to dream, and held each other’s hands as we leaned our bodies into future possibilities. Stretching out beyond our metamour entanglements, we relished the sweetness and simplicity of our togetherness. A swelling bounty of gratitude for this time, with just the two of us, flourished fat inside my chest.
Eventually, it was time to head to Earthdance, to greet my parents who were on their way there—for the first time—ever!
This was huge for me. Somehow, this had not yet happened, despite the unspoken/unconscious vow I’d made to Earthdance back in 2016. I’d brought it up to my parents a couple times throughout my summer home-based with them. I knew it’d be a little tricky to orchestrate. And I nearly relinquished the idea…but it was my parents who stepped forward in the end and decided “we’re coming”.
I feel so moved, remembering this. Because…I knew that if I relinquished it this year, there’d be the possibility that the chance would be missed. I don’t know about yours, but my parents get older every year. And my dad is now (and has always been! look at that!) 46 years older than me. Making him 83 at present. The words ‘spring chicken’ sound in my mind. He is and is not that. A speckled, smooshy banana, he has always been. My gratitude for their choice to come stretches out beyond my eye can see.
I met my parents outside and gave them the grand tour, of the well-worn blankie sort. With Earthdance, as with most places I relate with, I really only know a little. I have my spots, and I have the well-worn paths I hug and rarely stray from. And so this is what I showed-and-told them: Casey’s Earthdance. We circled wide, skirting the foreign-to-me dorms, peering into the strangely exposed quarry (baring/bearing Fall’s approach), crossing the familiar field, walking the winding, time-bending halls and stairs of Nine Mountain, until our spiral closed in on the hearth and we entered the Farmhouse. My paintings hung throughout. Paintings my parents knew well, but not in this context. At Earthdance I’d like to think they are fellow dancers, common community members. Lounging, eating, sleeping, as all do. Their installation is also a not-inconspicuous means for me to assert my presence in the space. I will not be forgotten, and my longing heart hopes that my friends chuckle to themselves when they look at these colorful colossal companions and feel my eyes hungrily and unabashedly beaming through their portals, willing myself into their company.
Before sitting for potluck dinner with my parents, we first blessed the food. We held hands, as is native to me and my community, and my parents followed suit. What a powerful gesture: the hands of this generation that birthed us, one disconnected from this communal culture, held lovingly by my wonderfully-weird friend-family. We sat, all together, and imbibed a simple meal. At the long wooden table, on the long wooden benches, one of my paintings at the head of the table…my parents on either side of me. We talked to L, among others, and wove my parents into the fold by way of L and my Skidmore connection. The moment revived a familial balm, and smoothed something between L and I, too. Lu & Paul sat across from us. Their presence opposite me and the ones who made me activated a pentagonal force-field, a Home, to be geometrically correct.
They didn’t stay long, but their visit was Immense. The time came for them to hit the road and I hugged them and turned toward the wonderful world of beings I was about to bid adieu to.
I entered the Sunday jam and slipped into our collective mother tongue. Words were knocked off the platters of our mouths as we passed through the doorway; letters tumbled one-by-one into a tiny pile outside the entry. Inside the studio, our bodies, amoeba-like, began to shapeshift and writhe. We communed and spoke through our bodies as they merged and individuated, rolled and clacked. A part of me hovered, stood outside the studio, and then silently walked the land, solemnly knowing it’d be awhile before I’d get to experience this again.
A ways in, R appeared. I’d hoped he might. It’d been a whole year since I’d seen him. Since our previous fall’s romance had climaxed and dispersed. We smiled at each other, and our bodies greeted one another in dance.
I’d planned to stay with J. Something that had been titillatingly close for so long. A threshold we’d not yet crossed. We both leaned in, and felt this was the time.
I showered outside the studio, while R sat, neighbor-like, on the toilet beside me and shared about his life. Others popped in and out. I nestled happily into the permeability of the space and the ease with which others came and went, irregardless of my bare bod.
J and my tracks finally converged, we hooked arms, and ventured into the dark wood.
Night passed, and through it, I was not all there. J was so dear. And it was so sweet to stay with him in this incredible forest-eaten cabin. And yet, I’d not been able to gather my whole self for the occasion. And perhaps, neither had he. The next morning, I slept late, missed therapy, connected with J again in partial presence, and missed my chance to say goodbye to Lu. The writing was on the wall: I’d finally Hit the Wall, and Dropped the Ball.
The composite lapse spoke Loudly and ushered my exit. I pivoted and packed. Said my final goodbyes, and, heart clinging, aching, escorted my body off of Earthdance land and into Cindy’s comforting cocoon.
***
On my way home (one of many), I made a last stop: to the cemetery and to the Lake.
I said goodbye to my ancestors under-earth and under-water. I offered the remains of my summer to their bodies and elemental surrogates. I felt ritual fatigue settling deeply into my body, and effortfully animated my weighted my arms to carry out these completing gestures.
The final stretch.
September 29-30: WINGS (FULL MOON)
The next bit of writing references a story I have not yet told, or rather, shared. The iceberg is an entity that formed or crowned within me during the death throes of my dance career. I write about it here.
***
The iceberg withstands time. Great, Silent Beauty. Impervious to the wiggles and waves of its deep sea cohabitants. Voice-less, throat-full. The hollows of a drum. The roots of the Yew. The barrel of a mountain. Time-less and abiding.
Or so it appears.
Years had passed… Mysterious, impenetrable, the frozen body inside of me would still not reveal, or give way. But it did give…water. Nearly imperceptible, but clearly, plainly there (its reflective surface glazing my fingers and deflecting my vision). Just enough. Enough to germinate two seeds. To crack open access to an INESCAPABLE COMMITMENT TO MY OWN LIFE FORCE. That then began to sprout. Rooted eternally in the concavities of my kidneys/SI joints/twin psoas/womb/ovaries/transverse processes/spinal siblings/dark waters of my belly-cave.
Seeds bury into themselves as a form of protection (a seed within a seed). They become inaccessible. Turned Off. Deep in a chrysallic dream painted by the imaginal cells’ whimsy. The dream is intoxicating, and continually pours into the seed’s every orifice. A thick, black, sparkly soil-tar that stuffs all openings, keeps light from penetrating any crack. It tricks the seed. Lethe, the River of Forgetting, drugs/drowns the seed in an illusion. A heavy sleep to console the soul and distract from harmful or not-yet-ripe conditions. It takes an Act of God or Force Majeure to awaken a seed from this deep reverie. To break dormancy: Water, Light, Oxygen, Heat…Scarification.
The lines that snaked out from the darkness of My Vision Quest spent a whole month dancing around on paper. Figuring and reconfiguring. They were fickle, tricky to find. I kept erasing and listening, drawing and re-drawing. But I knew—and I love this about a tattoo—there would be an end to the noncommittal meandering. A strong, masculine DATE to mark their forward-memory. September 29th, the next Full Moon.
I packed up my life again. ‘On The Road Again’ again. But—I told my parents firmly, lucidly—“I am not doing this, again”.
I packed my car, my Cindy, my “mobile home”, with a precision that only I can achieve. One that charitably distracted from the weight of my departure—this many-headed monstrosity—with the shrill yet sturdy high of my inane mastery.
In line with my plans to leave Early, I completed all of my preparations Early. Resplendent evidence of some new-growth maturity.
The lines landed the night before I was to hit the road. I was tired, the fluorescent lights nagging…at last I decided: “It’s complete.”
I’d let my dad, a fellow artist, in on my secret project and when it was finally finished, I walked it straight upstairs to his studio-office to reveal my final draft.
The next morning I set out with a finality. With little in me willing to meet the adventure. But, that little did shuffle forth, and smiled at the opportunity to untether from all ideas, places, and identities—a now familiar opportunity—as I unhitched and began to traverse the country.
I opened my wings wide for the long haul, and arrived quickly, almost abruptly, at my next stop, just a 2-day jaunt from my homeplace.
Landing in Asheville, I warmly welcomed an unplanned night in a hotel. I embraced the solitude and reflection it afforded me in the final moments before the Time Came.
Everything was timed and aligned precisely. (Timing timing timing timing - is everything). I awoke on the full moon of September 29th, one moon since my descent into Vision Quest, and prepared the body- my body. I took one last photo of my pre-pubescent seed sprouts and virginal back-scape before muffling the entire surface with a thick coat of numbing agent, and mummifying myself in saran wrap.
Installed at Arulu’s at last, held in the hands of her sacred space, my ritual fatigue burrowed deep. I reached down deeper and pulled it out of me, one last time- the final gestures, for a Final Rite. I stepped outside and spoke my concluding spell, lean and leaf-less, to the trees I found myself facing. I laid out the corresponding objects, the ones that matched the hum of the moment, and re-lit my Vision Quest genesis candle.
I sowed an Inescapable Commitment to My Own Life Force— And now,I Go OutsideI Begin AgainI’m going, EarlyI’m doing, LessI pull backI guard my precious self I save MeFor MeI Am TrueI am ClaroApologies are my ChoiceI’m completeI no longer need to wring myself outI’m readyI am growing UpI exercise my WILLI ChooseI listen, and I LEADI am building a Home for Me, To be with myselfTo Be MeI am going Home.
We began.
Two days stretched their tongue out beyond its anatomical reach. My playlist, a party of all that was ending, sustained us. At some point on Day 1 I requested a pause. And emptied the tears that were accumulating at the surface, relieving the tarp of the heavy rain. I spoke some of the content to Arulu, bits of a tale she’d not yet heard. Mostly about dance. She felt honored, and held me in a love beamed out from her otherworldly this-earth-ly body. The ceremony resumed.
A mushy mix of pain and numbness saturated my being and all accessory beings. My body forgot itself. Cells, one by one, dropped their identities and turned dark. Switches flipped in concert like a heavy dump of rain, until all was dark within.
I stood up from the table one last time.
Arulu recorded video of my back body for approval one last time.
We nodded in synchronous agreement:
I was Complete.
I stepped outside, squinty and Bambi-like in my body’s disorientation. Arulu captured our creation in its fullness, in the Light of God. I let my sleepy pants fall to the earth and, perfectly bare, perched at the edge of her magic stone-lined fire pit; a faerie on a precipice. An image a future-seeing part of me knew I’d need.
The next day, Sunday, I danced. Then connected the dots, following the map of the day I’d laid out for myself. By evening, we’d gathered all of our pies (as Arulu’s ‘PIE OR DIE’ party demanded). And finally, we gathered round the fire.
Around the fully charged portal, aka fire pit Arulu gate-keeps on her land, sat Women of Great Importance: Mirna, my same-same; LUMiN, my Austin angel; Arulu, my childhood imaginary best-friend; and Remaya, a future luminary. We defied geography, time, and reason with our composite presence. The flames extended up to high heaven and we took a photo of our floating faces, red and holy in her light.
***
The next morning, October 1st:
I blinked my eyes open upon a new, yet very familiar world. Everything looked nearly the same. Funny. Rising, I stretched my lightly crinkled, slightly damp, New wings. Awkward and exciting, they unfurled slowly. At full span I idled, as the last of the amniotic fluid evaporated, and gathered up my lingering allies.
Inside a largely still, lightly swaying landscape (wobbly, when poked), I returned my belongings to their corresponding spots within the 3D puzzle I’d made of Cindy’s insides. Cindy was primed and poised. I was tired and awake. Together, we Turned…
And let go. Cindy, of the earth beneath her wheels; and me, my fingers from all they’d been wringing, dry dirt easily falling away, leaving them empty, open.
A naked sprite, a neue fae, I perched at the portal.
I used my eyes to see and cast my vision out to sea…
A Sacrifice Cast Out Of MeA Sense Cast Out To See
Tucked in my being, two allies, seeded way back on that June New Moon. Together, they begat:
Courage.
A new courage. That forged WILL, with HEART.
Together, we took off.
Toward Santa Fae.
I’m rising againGetting full up, Letting GoI’m not to be missed
—me, 5.13.23
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