((( I am in Chicago-Illinois at the moment, a city built on the unceded ancestral lands of the Council of Three Fires: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, as well as over a dozen tribes, including the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox. I am a visitor.
A friend asked me the other day if i wanted to move: I always do, constantly. I will never stop moving; that's the basic constitution of my situation. The same way that this text has been moving with me from place to place, catching bits and pieces of stories here and there, getting a thicker layer of saltwater and dusty city air each time... mirroring elemental sediments. And at the same time I always return home.
Since I have been writing the following text/ural poem, I have been wondering if/when i could post it. I wrote it in September and October 2023, at the end of my rehab, trying to understand my shifting landscapes and just before our timelines changed and the genocide in Gaza began to unfold. A catastrophy, amongst many interconnected catastrophies and inflamations of the past present and future on this planet ... how to listen, share and hold in the breakings? How to transform?
In combination with the condition that this text is about, the unfolding tragedies made me think of the book "spinal catastrophism". I haven't actually read it, but it stands in my shelf and reminds me of something:
If spinal catastrophies are historical facts, stored in our spinal backbones, then how are we observing, carrying and holding those? How are we accountable for them without fixing ? Whatever we do now, our descendants will have a memory of, stored not only in our DNA, but also in our bones.
We are and we become our memories (and they stiffen over time).
While we're younger, our bones though are still flexible (that's also why my spinal condition is best treated at a young age), and solidify getting older, like stubborn cement at first, until at some point they break, get splinters and become dust again - although this doesn't happen before a very long time. When we transition, aka die, our bones are what stays the longest, together with our teeth. What then, happens to our memories ? Do they return to the soil and metabolize ? Have we made sure, that they are good compost?
If we knew how to read the stories stored in between our mammal vertebras, maybe we would keep them moist and moving, make sure they aren't forgotten and make sure, those memories are loving/loved, worth building upon and become good ancestral material themselves... curved and full of wisdom. I wonder how to do this on the land I live on, back home. )))
a snake turned dinosaur turned river
eine gerade Linie verläuft von A nach B
eine gerade Linie hat keine Kurven
eine gerade Linie ist
stark
gerade
jetzt
gerade jetzt macht das überhaupt keinen Sinn
hat sich jemand schonmal eine gerade Linie unterm Mikroskop angeschaut? Sie besteht aus unendlich vielen Punkten, welche quasi nichts anderes als Kreise sind und dementsprechend Kurven.
die gerade Linie meiner Armspannbreite beträgt jetzt 1,70.
so groß "sollte" ich gerade eigentlich sein.
aber nach welchem Normbuch?
ich komme jetzt gerade auf 1,63.
die Vorstellung der Größe ist verwirrend und macht doch irgendwie Sinn, denn
meine Arme reichen heraus wie die wehenden Zweige einer Trauerweide,
in Streckung zur nassen Seeoberfläche.
Gestern sprach Mimi über Bäume, und
wie sie niemals gerade wachsen, sondern
sich den äußeren Einflüssen anpassen.
Dort fließt das Wasser, dort wachse ich hin...
Hier stört mich der Asphalt, dann strecke ich meine Wurzeln drumherum aus
und schwinge den Stamm um die Ecke...
Gerade gibt es nicht.
Straightness does not exist.
bzw. Wie wachsen wir wie Bäume?
How do we grow like trees?
Er spricht zu mir, mein gewundener Stamm:
Jetzt, gerade
berührt meine rechte Schulter die Bank, sanft schiebe ich sie ein,
kippe das Becken,
drehe die Rippen
atme in die Brust
Atme Atme Atme
Atme Atme Atme
Atme Atme Atme
und Aus
und aus uns hinaus, hinauf, nach oben strebend zur Baumkrone ~
als wenn ich noch nie zuvor geatmet hätte
als wenn ich ohne Luft gelebt hätte
und doch stehe ich hier jetzt gerade und morgen auch.
Sauerstoff rein (vom Baum)
Kohlenstoffdioxid raus (zum Baum)
Wenn Bäume zum Licht atmen ~ wo ist dann mein Licht?
Wenn Bäume zum Wasser wachsen ~ wo ist dann mein Wasser?
I have spent the last three weeks on a rehabilitation for spinal deformations, in medical terms known as a chronic disease called scoliosis.
scolio means "a bending"
bending of bones, matter, form, maybe even of time?
what are those bones moving away from?
where to?
could i read my curvatures of 58°56° like coordinates?
where does it want me to go ?
"they" say that scoliosis is a condition thats causes are mostly still unknown, but - and not only the genetically transmitted ones like mine - it appears primarily in female (assigned) bodies.
therefor during certain supposedly informative lectures we heard about "how to carry groceries, how to empty the washing machine or how to do daily household chores" ... correctly
jokes aside
curved and bent female bodies ? doesn't that sound familiar?
would care-work be the cause of a fold?
care-work is most often inivisibl.e/ised
so is scoliosis.
it so often doesn't appear from the outside, how much bending there is on the inside.
you look so straight ! (although I am not, in so many ways)
would more boundaries have prevented the (sometimes but not always) genetic gift-giving?
i don't know, this is a (very) vague hypothesis that i observe in my process of learning how to say no.
and at the same time right now, jetzt gerade, i have to say yes.
some of the most powerful bodies i encountered during the last three weeks were much older then me, wise and curved like the most beautiful trees. they taught me a lot, when i suddenly got so afraid of my own folds and osseous travels and where they will lead to.
how can i love them better? how can i tremble and still float in the wind?
in German, when someone exerces power over you they can "dich zusammenfalten", they can fold you. your body literally and energetically folds, you're shrinking.
my spine though is not outside but inside of me, not apart, but a part.
i want to move towards and not away from it (i've said that elsewhere).
"we must risk new forms" i read in a text by Sophie Strand a while ago.
and for those shapes to be taken we must shed some others.
last year, while i was meeting for the first time with my long term hologram - a constellation of three people that i learn to trust and that ask me questions about my physical, emotional and social well being - one of those friends told me that my snake is ancient and connected to death. or better to say, every shedding has to do with transitioning.
my spine always was a snake for me. but when you shed, you also loose something, get rid of a layer, compost it. maybe the spine is more then that?
that same friend then did a thought experiment with me. what if my snake was actually a dinosaur, in an age sense. a mesozoic like wisdom, ancient ancestral memory.
it is everything that came before and everything that will come after and everything that is now.
my spine, even though it is curving through me like a snake, holds all the knowledge of my being, swimming through the mnemonic water like a wave.
our spines are something like the memory keepers of our bodies.
they go way back
they know our landscape better then we do
they are not afraid to swim, even when i am
they say: see how many tidal curves, concentric rock formations and meandering shore lines there are to explore (and see how hard it is for you to admit that you are curious)
i am afraid that, when i lean into it, i will get lost in the currents. but is dominating the stream the only other way?
what about a dance?
what about a dance together?
anyway, this is just (another) beginning.
but right now, jetzt gerade, it is more than just a part of it.
and all the parts make one.
und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne
jedem Ende ein Anfang.
