Readying for death
What needs to die to create space for new ways of being?
Image description: Close crop of brilliant yellow and orange maple leaves on branches, glimmers of blue sky here and there between the leaves.
Halloween, Samhain, and Dia de los Muertos greetings to you.
This time of year is significant for many people and cultures. It’s the time when the veil between the spirit and material worlds is very thin. When communication between the worlds is easier; when it’s easier to slip between the worlds—permanently, or not.
Where I live—Massachusett, Wampanoag, and Pawtucket land—the trees, grasses, and plants are all taking part in the ritual of death right now. Leaves are going brilliant as they release from their branches and drift into piles at the base of stone walls. The vegetables in my garden have all been harvested, their stalks lonely in the wind. And with an unexpected snowstorm and freezing temperatures last night, the last calendula flowers on my deck are now brown and shriveled. All part of the natural cycle of life and death.
But this year, death has come to too many, much too soon. Millions of people whose names I will never know; people who were friends, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, loved ones to somebody. I’m honoring the lives of those killed by COVID-19 and the failure of our governments to properly prepare, protect, and care for their people. I’m honoring the many Black people killed by the police here in the U.S. and by military forces in Nigeria and around the world. And I’m honoring those killed by climate change, in wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, storms, and more.
Millions of untimely, unnatural deaths. Millions of people killed this year because of the violence of the structures and systems under which we live.
The Death card from (left to right): the Collective Tarot, The Wild Unknown Tarot, and The Next World Tarot.
Image description: Three tarot cards with crystals above them. All are labeled “Death,” with the number 13. The card on the left shows a snake having shed its skin, eating from a bunch of grapes above it. There is a small skeleton of a rodent next to its shed skin. The middle card is a black and white drawing of a bird’s skeleton, with a few feathers still attached. The card on the right portrays a femme on a white horse in a desert landscape The person holds a parasol, wears a pink hat with a veil, a pink corset with spikes, and blue tennis shoes. They have tattoos of roses and an anchor on their arm. They are being greeted by a large rodent wearing a pink hat. There are skulls of people and/or animals on the ground.
In the Tarot the Death card is not usually a harbinger of actual physical death. It’s often an indication that you’re ready to complete or end a phase of your life, or something in your life: a job, a relationship, a way of being. Maybe it’s time to let go of an idea about yourself or how things should be.
The Death card teaches us the lessons of the life-death-rebirth cycle. You cannot have birth without death, death without birth, rebirth without death. It’s all one, inseparable; it’s the reality of life on this earth. New plants can’t grow unless the plants from the year before die to make way for them. The old plants decompose and fertilize the soil, creating a rich environment for seedlings to sprout. (Watch Typewriter Tarot’s beautiful, short exploration of the death card.)
In the Collective Tarot, the death card is represented by a snake shedding its skin. It asks: what are we being called to shed? What needs to be sloughed off in order for a new life to flourish, in order for new ways of being to flourish?
It’s abundantly clear to me that we need to shed so many things about the way society operates, how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the world, the creatures, and beings around us. So many broken things need to be sloughed off.
~~~
In a few days it will be Election Day.
I recently heard an interview with Marisa Franco, co-founder and executive director of Mijente, on the Sunstorm podcast, which is hosted by Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo. Franco noted the time of year, the thinning of the veils between the living and the dead. And, she said,
I believe that as a species, as a planet, we are entering into fall and politically, we are in a time where the veil between the things we most desire and most dream of and the calamities we most fear, the veil between those two things is extremely thin. We are at the razor’s edge right now. What we’re able to seed in this time, will lead to a spring eventually, or a very, very, very, very long winter.
Listening to Franco I wondered, what are we planting now as we prepare for what must die? We must seed, deliberately and in community, a vision toward the spring we need. Otherwise, she’s right: we’re in for an endlessly long winter.
We know November 3rd isn’t going to usher in a sudden transformation. It’s going to take weeks—maybe even months—for all the mailed-in ballots to be counted and certified. And there’s the real possibility that Trump may not step down even if it’s clear that he lost the election.
So it’s up to us in these last few days to help get out the vote and ensure everyone who wants to can vote. I’ll be ready to hit the streets to demand that all votes be counted, and to demand a peaceful transfer of power if needed.
But even that won’t be enough for the spring we are longing for.
A Biden presidency is not going to change the fundamental ways this country is broken. A Democratic majority in the House and the Senate isn’t going to suddenly transform the systems that have led us to this moment.
Of course, this election is vitally important. It will determine the landscape in which we will be organizing and living the next four or eight years. As Brittany Ramos DeBarros, organizing director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, put it during a call for The Frontline, “…it is about choosing the terrain that we will be fighting on.” To use DeBarros’s analogy, will we be fighting uphill in the snow, or will we be fighting uphill in the snow in flip-flops and shorts while fireballs are being lobbed at us? I’d rather have the former.
Either way we’ll be fighting for a whole new system, a whole new way of governing ourselves. We’ll be bringing about the end of a society built on white supremacy, capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, imperialism, and colonialism. The systems created by these harmful world-views must die so that we can create new systems.
We’ll be planting seeds for governing systems based on relationships, grounded in love and the recognition and celebration of each of our humanity. For economic systems based on care and providing for all, systems rooted in abundance rather than scarcity.
I’m pretty sure we won’t see all these changes fully realized in our lifetimes. But I am just as sure the only way such changes will have any chance of taking hold is if we imagine them and take action to bring them into being. They might start as the smallest of actions. They might not make a difference that you can notice in the dominant economy or system of government. But if enough of us commit to this, now and for the rest of our lives, if we commit to doing it in community, to share what we are doing and how and support each other in doing so, we will begin shifting things.
So many people are doing this right now. I see it in my circle of friends and those I learn from. Organizers, writers, artists, parents, farmers. So many different kinds of people who are trying new ways of doing what they do, new ways of relating to themselves and each other.
This is what birthing a new world looks like.
~~~
So today, as I mourn and honor the dead, I am also thinking about what needs to die within myself. What can I shed, to make space for something to emerge in the spring? What must fall off my tree, and shrivel and become compost or something new?
One thing I’m thinking about is how I can change the ways I relate to my creative work. What do I need to change within myself so that I can fully value the process of writing poetry for what it is—an act of creation, a divine and magical process that itself is worth more than any prize or recognition?
How do I have compassion for myself when I feel jealous or when I feel bad about doing enough to be “out there” with my work? How do I gently remind myself that these feelings are rooted in patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism, which all teach us that we must fight to be one of the top few in our field and that only those who make it to the top are worthy of admiration and rewards?
How do I relate to my work in a way that doesn’t center the product, but rather centers the joy in the act of creation, the ideas that come through, the possibilities that the work opens up, and the connections that the poetry fosters?
So much of the richness of my life—the people I know and the connections I have—I can trace somehow back to my life as a poet. How do I help myself value that as deeply and profoundly as any product or external recognition?
That’s just one, tiny example.
And I wonder what you’re thinking about in this moment. What might you shed and transform to make way for beautiful new ways of being?
However you celebrate or mark this time of year, I hope you experience deep connections, thoughtful reflections, and, yes, joy.
Please vote if you haven’t already, and help make sure everyone who wants to vote can, and can have their vote counted.
Maybe I’ll see you on the streets. Or, at The Frontline post-election update and next steps call on the day after the election.
Prompting
If you have a tarot deck, pull out the Death card, and meditate with it for as long as you want.
When you are ready, pull four cards and place them around the Death card in a square:
To the right: What are you ready to shed within yourself or in your life?
Beneath: What is preventing you from doing so?
To the left: What do you need to remove that obstacle?
Above: What will be born in the space you create?
If you don’t have a tarot deck, meditate on one of the images of the Death card in this post, or find one one line. Then, journal in response to these questions:
What are you ready to shed within yourself or in your life?
What is preventing you from doing so?
What do you need to remove that obstacle?
What will be born in the space you create?
Engaging:
What else I’m reading/listening to/thinking about/taking action on:
I’m currently obsessed with Janelle Monáe’s latest release, Turntables. My friend Ari says the movie for which she wrote it for, All in: The Fight for Democracy, is also very good.
Also, very much obsessed with Midst, a new journal/experiment, in which you can watch a poem come into being. (If you want to support, they have a Patreon)
Tenants in Minneapolis are bringing a new world into being by evicting their landlord.
The massive youth-led movement in Nigeria that started as a protest against police brutality has grown into a nation-wide movement for justice and democracy. Support the call for an international investigation into last week’s mass killing of peaceful protesters in Lagos.
Community/Announcements:
I’m hiring!
My next poetry collection, Last Days (Alice James Books) comes out in April 2021. I’m interested in creating an alternative model to traditional book launches—one that relies less on capitalist modes of competition, scarcity, and extraction, and instead foregrounds relationships and collaboration, abundance, and a gift economy. I’m also interested in exploring how this moment can be a catalyst for new ways of thinking about the intersection of arts and organizing, poetry and movement work.
I’ve got exciting ideas on how to make that happen, and I’m looking for someone to help me put it into action. So I’m hiring a Fundraising and Social Media Organizer, for 20 hours a month for the next few months, at $25 an hour. Please check it out, apply, or help spread the word. Thank you!
(I discuss my launch plan and more in a recent interview in Crisis Palace.)
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