New Moon in Aries. The Black Rose.
Planting seeds for the new way…Poetry. London in Spring! Pilgrimage to the Magdalene Caves & The Black Madonna.
Dearest Readers,
This New Moon in Aries, I am continuing to dream about a world where black rest and black joy reigns…
How about you?
Here is a gorgeous song to this effect. I’d like to dedicate it to the beautiful black rose that has entered my life, long may she rest and reign here! :
I have also been grieving A LOT about what is happening in our world, and have been lighting candles and sending prayers to all those precious bodies and souls, bearing the brunt of the unbearable violence of domination and greed that continues to play out it’s daily death march.
Every life matters, every soul deserves our mourning.
I highly recommend viewing this post, of a beautiful teacher, who refused the last sound from his school building to be bombs and insisted it would be music. AMEN brother. Amen :
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DW4Km2Uih-O/
When the pain of ongoing racial hatred floors me, when I think of the stories, songs, wisdom and recipes that will not be shared and created because of this cruel, unfathomable erasure…
When the rubble takes me to the ground, with ancestral memories tearing open like ruptures in the fibres of my being, from the smoke and poison that has been endured and breathed in, for me to be sat here in peace writing this to you…
I call upon the wisdom and strength of my grandmothers who taught me everything I know about the mighty weapon of love.
No. Now is not the time for cowering.
We lean in and do what women have often done throughout the ages in the face of brutality, we stay, we care and we love.
It is this, that builds and births the foundation of anything lasting in our world.
When I remember not the violence and harm that’s been done to this body, but their dreams of me, their hopes, their intentions, their longings.
I can begin again. As many times as it takes.
When people ask me how old I am now, I must admit… I’m ancient.
I’m scar clan.
Several deaths and rebirths deep.
What’s a few more between friends…
Time for some poems I think…
Burn The Story by Kali Varghese:
I thought it was important to tell you the story of my life,
How I was controlled, neglected, exiled, shunned, gaslit, invalidated,
How I was burned from the inside out.
Stripped, assaulted, then banished into silence,
How I was groomed as a child,
Then constantly re-enacted this trauma over and over again,
Trapped in trying to understand it,
Trying to break free,
How I lived transient homeless,
Starving, aching for a place to rest, to heal my wounds, to grow, to call home,
How I was a dyke in a straight jacket,
A queer in a dress,
Unendingly, intolerably, fluid,
Uncontainable, uncontrollable.
How I joined the circus,
Climbed up ropes of proof, to show you just how strong, how resilient this body is,
Formed a dance troupe called Dark Island, to celebrate the bodies that move differently and don’t fit neatly anywhere here,
Then a feminist collective of riot grrrl femmes, to rattle the cage of our awakening, to what she really is,
Then a stand up comedian and clown, to take the weight of all this suppression and grief and throw it out into the sky like laughter,
That echoes,
You cannot destroy the spirit of a woman,
You can violate her body,
But you will never have her song.
Oh yes, I learnt to perform.
I learnt to perform myself,
To over-give,
To please,
To contort, in misguided attempts for love, approval, care,
Served with a smile of self-betrayal whilst crying myself to sleep,
I wrung myself out like a cold-compress, laid gently across the forehead of all that harmed me, whilst apologising and calling myself sick,
Unworthy and deserving of it,
Lived my life quietly in a corner of shame, like a punishment,
And called it peace.
But then I decided to unlock the cage,
To walk out into the sun.
To burn the story.
And free myself,
You already knew,
If you looked me in the eyes,
Instead of at my skin,
You would’ve seen it,
I was a stack of hurts,
Shoved into an armour of politeness and charm,
Trying to entertain you,
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So you’d see me as human, as equal,
I’m putting it down now.
That armour, that suit, that dress,
Leave it in the woods,
Where I was first carved into by men and robbed of innocence,
But not of power.
I return there naked and singing to the trees,
Completely unknown to myself,
To the world,
And deliriously,
Deliciously,
Free.
With thanks to Kareem Parkins-Brown for the birth of this poem.
Collate all that poetry you’ve written over the years instead into a beautiful book that looks somewhere between a hymn book and a spell book!?
Call it: ‘The Song of Us.’
Poems, stories, rituals and incantations of cultural reclamation.
Release it in Autumn and do a live tour with it with musicians from across cultures.
Encouraging unity and cohesion through collective remembering.
Don’t mind if I do…
Ritual for liberation and reclamation.
May the blood of life be returned to the Earth in place of the blood of violence.
May we have the courage and conviction to walk as warrior’s for the beauty and sacredness of all life.
May the reign of domination and destruction end.
I will leave you with some London in the Spring time magic…
And the powerful news, that my next stop on this journey of ritual healing and reclamation after visiting my family and my grandmother’s garden of remembrance…
Is a Pilgrimage to The Magdalene Caves & The Black Madonna in France.
More info on that below. I can’t wait to post some new travel writing and music for you here about this! :
The last time I meditated with a Skull, was with a Toltec shaman in the mountains on the outskirts of Barcelona, (yes I am aware how this sounds, I’m a Sagittarius, I left my shame back at the gas station several stops ago), he turned out to be ‘harvesting the sexual energy’ of many of the female participants so this should be an interesting femme led counter to that experience!
Lakshmi (my wagon of dreams) is both excited for the coming seasons and cycles ahead…
And being heavily grounded and humbled by the realities of life…
And reminded to trust the true pace of nature…
The Pilgrim by Kim Krans:
The wanderer, the traveler, the apprentice.
For The Pilgrim, an outward journey is always an inward journey.
This archetypal wanderer seeks wisdom, experience, and meaning in the farthest reaches of the globe and the deepest regions of the spirit.
Others will wonder when The Pilgrim will settle down and claim a more conventional life, but The Pilgrim knows that the heart belongs in motion.
Where there is motion, there is freedom, expansion, and growth.
Responsibilities, social conventions, and logistics lull us to sleep, and soon The Pilgrim becomes veiled in the slumber of the day-to-day.
Yet when this archetype awakens, it rallies our senses of adventure and leads us out the door toward a new reality.
With The Pilgrim at your side you will never lack courage.
Nor do you need every amenity.
Travel light, travel soon … your spirit needs it.
With Love & Courage.
Your ancient friend.
xo Kali.
