Ancestral memory at the end of the world
We have been here before
We’re just about a week away from the holidays of Samhain, Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos, and All Souls Day. This is a time of year when many of us honor the thinning of the veil between this world and the next. It’s a time when it’s a little easier to communicate or feel the presence of those who have passed—our loved ones and ancestors.
In the spirit of this season, this post offers some thoughts about the end of the world and what we might learn from those ancestors who experienced the end of their worlds.*
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Last month, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I happened to catch one of the many retrospectives saturating the news that week. The NPR reporter cited a statistic—and I don’t recall the exact number, but he said something like 90% of Americans were in support of the bombing of Iraq. He was making the case that most people in the US were in the thralls of patriotism and fear right after the attacks on the Twin Towers, and it wasn’t until much later that they—we—realized how we had been lied to by the Bush administration.
This doesn’t resonate at all with my memories of that time. I had just moved to San Francisco that summer. In the days and weeks following 9/11, I sought out others who were similarly outraged by the U.S. government’s response. Suddenly, I found myself connected to a large and vibrant group of art-activists. I learned about street theater, how to make giant puppets, and how to harness the power of performance and art to inspire and activate people.
When I think about that time, I remember town hall meetings filled with people determined to stop the bombing of Iraq. I remember millions of people filling the streets of every major city in the U.S. and around the world protesting the Bush administration’s lies and warmongering—including hundreds of thousands of us shutting down the city of San Francisco through diffuse but coordinated actions.
Of course, there was also rabid patriotism. I do also remember my discomfort as American flags proliferated on porches and widows in the Sunset, the San Francisco neighborhood where I lived. I know there was significant support for the Bush administration and its actions. But the NPR story made it sound like we all followed without a peep of protest.
The dissonance between my memories and the story I heard got me thinking about memory—its construction, who it serves, and the role it plays in creative resistance. And that brought me to ancestral memory and how it might serve us in this current moment when so much must change—because so much is built on harmful, deadly foundations of white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and heteropatriarchy.
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In the aftermath of 9/11, I began to understand how U.S. imperialism was harming, violating, and alienating people all over the world. I felt sure that the right response to a horrific terrorist attack was not to unleash deadly violence and war on a whole country and its people. I remember how determined my friends and I were to move as many people as we could to see the truth and take action to protest the U.S. government.
I remember how strongly I believed we would succeed.
I was wrong. We failed to stop Bush’s deadly aggression. And, several years later, I was aghast that the country elected him for a second term. That’s when it became more clear to me that the world I was living in functioned via the enormous and inhumane application of power by the few over the many. And over the course of the next two decades, I came to understand more deeply how racial capitalism functioned, how U.S. imperialism and military aggression was intertwined with capitalism, and how almost every aspect of my life was shaped by it. And I experienced again and again how the few will not give up their power easily, even if holding on to power means the complete destruction of our world as we know it.
Today, whether because of the election of Trump, the climate crisis, the uprisings for Black lives, the COVID-19 pandemic, or other conditions, it seems like many more people are talking about how racist, unjust, and unsustainable our societal structures are. These conversations are a world apart from the conversations I was having after 9/11.
Back then, we talked about how we could change the world. Today, I’m encountering more conversations about the end of the world. About how everything is falling apart or must change. Which I think is true. But sometimes, these conversations proceed as if no one has ever gone through the end of a world.
I’ve been thinking about how many of our ancestors—in the far and recent past—lived through the ends of their worlds. Europeans brought the end of a world to those living on this and many other lands. The people who were forced through the Middle Passage went through the end of their world. The Holocaust was the end of a world, so was the rein of the Khmer Rouge. The warring actions of the U.S.—from the bombing of Hiroshima to the bombing of Iraq—brought ends of worlds. Throughout history there is example after example of societal ruptures that shattered structures and norms and killed millions of people. Those who survived these disasters had to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
Perhaps the end of the world that we’re facing today is more comprehensive, more disastrous, than all the ends that came before. Or perhaps it only feels that way because we are living inside it. I don’t know.
I’m also thinking about how there are also examples of nonviolent—or less violent—yet similarly disruptive events that ended one world and began a new one. The suffragette, labor, and civil rights movements all in a sense upended expectations and forced new ways of being and relating to each other. These and other social revolutions brought an end to social structures that needed to be dismantled, and they sought to create new ones that were more just.
And so, I find I am able to access some strength and resolve when I think about how we are not the first ones to face the end of the world. And, I find myself wanting to learn from those who came before. Whether they perished, survived, or even thrived during their endings, these ancestors have lessons that they might pass on to me now.
The question is how do I best open myself to this wisdom? I don’t always know. But I believe one of my tasks as a poet and a person working toward a different future is to make myself available and open to the ancestral wisdom that can help. Some of these ancestors left writings or other artifacts that we can turn to to learn from their experience. These are important ways to access their wisdom.
But what about the ones who could not or did not publish or leave behind their writings? Those who spent their days tending to the practicalities of their families’ lives, those whose bodies toiled in fields as their minds and spirits engaged in other matters, those whose voices were suppressed, discounted, ignored? How might I access what they have to teach?
I’ve developed rituals over the years—setting up altars, making offerings, meditating. I ask these ancestors for support and guidance, wisdom and protection, and then opening myself up to what might come through.
On the best days, messages come through and my brain doesn’t overthink them. I’m able to let my body feel into the wisdom I’m being offered, and find ways to translate it into words, poems, essays. The messages are about survival and suffering, about letting go, about getting in alignment with my values, about opening up to new ways of thinking, and taking risks. They are about our interconnectedness and the power that can come from being in deep community with other humans and more-than-human beings.
Other days, my mind is too busy or my heart too overwhelmed to receive what comes. I’d say these days outnumber the best days. But I’m trying to accept where I am at any given time. I try to make space to rest, to feel into my feelings. I attend to my rituals, and I try again.
Because, as the world burns and floods, I believe poets, artists, mystics, witches, and healers have much to bring to this collapsing world. I believe we can provide entries into compassion and paradigm shifts. We can offer radical imaginings of what can be. And I think we can be channels for messages and memories of our ancestors who have been here before and want to guide us on our way forward. So I ask myself again and again, how can I become “quiet enough to listen to the ancestors”?
*This post is a revised and expanded version of a presentation I gave last month. I engaged with the poet Purvi Shah in a discussion titled “Ritual: Weaving Collective & Ancestral Memory,” during a virtual conference on the topic of "Memory and Memorial, hosted by the University of Washington, Bothell. Ten years ago, Purvi and I worked together on a poetry performance that marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11, bringing forward Asian American perspectives and experiences of that day and its aftermath. In our conversation last month, we reflected on the role of collective and ancestral memory in advancing social justice. And we led a collective writing ritual (see below).
Prompting
“Ritual: Weaving Collective & Ancestral Memory,” developed in collaboration with Purvi Shah. You can follow Purvi on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
You can do this prompt alone or with a group.
Clear your space and signal to yourself and whoever/whatever guides your writing that you are open to receiving inspiration and guidance. You might light a candle or incense, ring a bell, or burn some herbs.
Begin with breath to create or share in physical and somatic collective grounding. Alone or together, take three deep breaths—easy inhales and easy exhales, perhaps lengthening your inhales and exhales with each breath.
Bring to mind an ancestor or ancestors—related or chosen—whose experiences and memories might support your thriving right now.
Invite these ancestor(s) into the space. You can name them out loud or silently.
Bring to mind one ritual or experience (physical, spiritual, emotional, intangible, etc.) in relation to these ancestor(s).
Be open to a wide range of what this might be. It could be cooking soup with your grandfather, discovering an Audre Lorde poem in a dog-eared used book, going for a walk and seeing something that reminded you of an ancestor, etc.
Feel into that ritual or experience with all of your senses.
What was the taste, texture, heart-sense of this ritual/experience?
Ask yourself/your guide(s)/your muse: “What does this ritual/experience offer me at this moment? How can I weave it into my now?”
Begin writing. We suggest starting with the phrase I remember _____________ and now I ____________. You may want this to be a litany poem, with every line using this structure. Or, this could be the first line that prompts the rest of the poem. Write for as much time as you have.
If you are doing this with a group, you may want to go around and share one or two phrases I remember ___________ and now I ____________ to create an oral/aural litany.
When you are finished, take three more mindful breaths. Thank your ancestors and guides.
As you go about the rest of your day, week, month, you might be attentive to what experiences lend themselves to ritual and therefore to memory, individual and collective.
Engaging
Three podcast recommendations on the themes of ancestral memory and the ends of worlds:
Throughline: The Aftermath of Collapse: Bronze Age Edition. This episode launched me into thinking about the various ends of the world throughout human history.
La Cura: Culture Memory and Healing Justice. I was nourished and inspired by this interview with Cara Page, described as a “Black Queer Feminist cultural/memory worker, curator, and organizer of 30 plus years.” She talked about her latest project of ancestral healing work, “Changing Frequencies,” which seeks to “confront, heal & transform the historical and contemporary harms and abuses of the Medical Industrial Complex.”
Seeds and Their People: Fish Pepper. I loved this lengthy episode all about fish pepper, its history, its story, and its role in Black cuisine in the mid-Atlantic region. It was a beautiful deep dive into seeds as ancestors and ancestor seed keepers.
I’ve also been reading poems from Spells: 21st-Century Occult Poetry, edited by Sarah Shin and Rebecca Tamás and finding powerful ancestral wisdom and magic in them.
And finally, if you’ve been following the endless conversations spurred by the New York Times “Bad Art Friend” article, I wanted to lift up this analysis by Branko Marcetic in Jacobin, which explores some of the awful economic conditions of the profession of creative writing. I share it because Marcetic articulates some of the reasons why I am so keen on finding an anti-capitalist approach to getting my writing out in the world, whether through this newsletter or my “new kind of book launch,” or otherwise.
Community/Announcements
Families for Justice As Healing, one of the organizations that paying subscribers to this newsletter support, is asking folks in Massachusetts to send letters to our legislators supporting a new bill that would put a halt to new jail and prison construction. Check it out and sign on!
A million thanks and sparkles to everyone who came to Seeds Bursting Open in Fire: an evening of poetry, collective writing, dreaming, and activation for social justice. It was a truly magical and powerful event where artists and organizers of all kinds had a chance to learn from each other, inspire each other, and move and write together. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.
Thanks for reading this month’s issue! I’ll be back in your inbox on the next full moon, 11/19, with a generative, inspiring conversation between long-time organizers.