Touchstones
Returning to the same words again and again.
Dear beloved readers,
I prepped for class last week. I prepped and prepped and prepped, and eventually I put it down. Eventually, there is no more you can do. Eventually, you just have to be. To be present to what is and what wants to emerge.
I grounded. I meditated.
I called on my ancestors and teachers to support us.
I asked for the land to support us.
I returned to my syllabus spell, which I haven’t been including in my syllabi but realized I need to. You can find the syllabus spell in this post from last year.
I realized I am creating educational resources and needing to (re)use them myself, creating to share with others and also creating for future me to return to when she needs them.
I return to the same words over and over again.
The world keeps repeating, the same horrors and tragedies on beautiful mornings, and I keep coming back to these words. The three poems that I constantly return to these days are: Invitation by Oliver, the untitled poem below by Nikita Gill, and V’ahavta by Aurora Levins Morales. They ring through my mind and heart.
I return to their words, I return to the ones I have written inspired by them. What more can I say?
In her Instagram post linked above, Nikita Gill says that the poem she wrote has been a touchstone for her this year, as it has been for me and so many others.
What are your touchstones, dear reader?
What are the words you return to again and again?
What words give you comfort and solace in terrifying, beautiful times?
But there is always more to say. I read somewhere - and I can’t remember where, and that bothers me1 - that it won’t be more information that saves us, but poetry. As Audre Lorde wrote in her essay, Poetry is Not a Luxury:
…As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They lie in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare…
For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what our ideas really mean (feel like) on Sunday morning at 7 AM, after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth; while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new possibilities and strengths.
With that, dear reader, I leave you with these old ideas and words on a Sunday morning at 7am. May we continue to find new ways of making them felt.
With love and care,
Stephanie
If this rings a bell to you and you know what I’m talking about - the quote or the poem where this comes from - please let me know!