So here's the full story, unabridged, and with good shock value.
Those of you who are weak to the wrath of bizarre ways, mild to strong warnings I issue at this point.
First off, I had been feeling incredibly compressed and sad the past week (despite many good things astir...) and I decided that I needed a ceremonial cleansing and healing in spring's hands.
So on Saturday I had a spring-ceremony. It was most enjoyable and truthfully I feel a lot better.
First I decided that I needed to see myself how I was feeling. I took off my shirt and put my raven-magic hat aside. I looked at my face and at my ribs and at my eyes. Then, using the red lab grease-pencil I have procured, I marked under my eyes in long strokes - careful to keep my pattern symmetrical. At the point this took place, I hadn't bathed for three or four days, and so I shook out my hair as best I could, and tied my blue mountainman bandanna around my neck.
Then, I took out my assorted herbs (which naturally reside in a brown paper bag over my desk area) and set to work preparing a cleansing tea.
The tea was easily over fifteen parts (some of which I am having trouble remembering at this point) but I will try to list them below:
juniper berries, crushed, and with the seeds
montana sage brush
birch leaves
willow leaves
black walnut leaves
(homegrown) ground red chili pepper (w/ seeds)
texas mesquite from Big Bend national park (sort of a big deal - I hadn't ever used any of this...)
pepper plant
tobacco (really just a pinch)
powdered dandelion root
sweet red clover (with crushed flowerheads)
mulberry leaves
nettle chaff
(homegrown) mint leaves
mint stalks
willow twigs
orange peel
To make the ceremony truly personal I recalled that mayan rulers occasionally let their blood onto the incense they used in their temples. I don't really like inflicting pain on my person. In fact, I think it's terrifying, but I decided that feeling the fear and the self-sacrifice of the injury to my person was something understand my own emotion more thoroughly and to involve in the cleansing and cleaning that was going to happen afterwards. In a way, it was a motion of drawing the hurt from my body and letting it be absorbed and neutralized in the healing notions of the herbs.
I took my pocket knife, and with the blade, peirced my leg. It wasn't deep, but enough so that I could squeeze a drop of blood onto some of the orange peel I put into the tea. I added this final ingredient and took to preparing the drink.
I took water from my giant 4L jug in the english army-issue aluminum teapot my grandmother gave me and steeped the tea for a long time. While preparing the tea I listened to Sigur Rós (which I feel is incredibly calming...). When it all was ready, for some reason I put on The Big Wu's "Get off your Ass and Jam" which, upon reflection, was a bizarre choice in music, but actually, it has always been a "feel good" song for me, which fit the occasion.
After I deemed the drink ready, I lifted up my arms to the morning outside my window, and lifted the tea to my lips. Remarkably, it tasted tangy and was exploding with a spice I hadn't quite expected. (I think the pepper plant and the nettle added more flavor than I had expected for their proportion of the substance) I finished it off slowly, conserving the heat of the beverage, and enjoying the aroma of the steam.
Upon finishing, I had a moment of of silent meditation - just an instant of floating peace on the morning sun.
Then I poured the remaining water I had saved from the teapot into the now empty cup. A soft golden liquid - the remaining residues of the tea - stayed in the cup. I deemed this to be a sort of cleansing wash, and set it aside. I laid out the coffeefilter of the leaves and twigs aside to dry out - I'd need some of the stuff later.
I went back to the mirror and looked at my face again - not much better, but with a different twinge to it. The red was still there, so I took a rag, poured some of the golden wash onto it and ritually cleaned my face. I wiped my cheeks first, then both eyelids, one at a time. Next, I pulled the rag over my forehead - from right to left, and finished by cleaning my neck and wiping both of my lips. I repeated the process again, in the same tempo and order, then set the rag aside. My leg was still bleeding lightly, so I took another rag and poured more of the healing water on it. I washed my wound, making sure to get all the blood off. I took the grease pencil and wrote my
"smokeword" of meditation - n'chala - around the wound. (my drawing of the word n'chala is below...)
(It looks better when done by hand and on legs, probably...)
After all of this, I was beginning to feel very calm, and as I had been sitting on the floor while cleansing my leg, I became very aware - the sharpened eye came up again sharply for the first time in two (three?) weeks - and I felt almost dizzy. I saw the corners of my room and the morning sun made every speck of dust and every bump on the wall vibrate just a little bit. I breathed fast and swayed there for a while. It was blissful.
Eventually I decided I should probably get up and continue my ritual. That was good idea because I was getting very dizzy and my legs were a little weak when I stood up.
It was at this point that I had to pee. (*please brace yourself*)
As I hadn't eaten anything that morning yet (it was early...) I figured I didn't want to lose any of the tea and realized that I could be very satisfied by returning that hurt and sadness I was about to excrete to the earth.
I found the bottle from the Mr. Fizz I had earlier in the week (*see one of the previous posts...) and took off the label with my knife. I peed into it, somewhat startled and yet somewhat pleased at the deep yellow-gold of it. I wrote n'chala on the front, and sorta held it in my hand for a little while and let the light filter through it.
To tell the truth, I think it's funny to say, but it was really beautiful.
I wrapped the urine-bottle in a rag and got my raven-magic hat and put it on. I took my guitar strap and made a sort of sash out of it with a shoelace and put on my prophet-sweater.
And so I went, barefoot off onto campus - out of the dorm, past the sunbathers on Bascom, and over to the most natural place I know near Chadbourne... ...the lakeshore area behind the Social Sciences building.
The shoots and stones on the path nipped my feet a little, but I wasn't thinking about that. I hummed a chanting song that started from a simple three notes and evolved to have some sort of words... I think it was about walking at this point, a sojourn-song. I stopped to smell the sweet, white blossom of a flowering tree and almost cried for the waves it made in me.
Then I went on - behind Social Sciences I found a place off in the trees where there were little patches of growing things, behind a fallen tree. I dug a hole in the clay and took out a portion of the tea leaves I had saved. I singed them a little and scattered them in the hole, pouring my urine on top. Replacing the earth, I said some stuff I can't really remember - things about finishing cycles and letting spring grow out of hurt. They were nice, and I felt renewed, in a sense.
I walked back to Chadbourne briskly, grey clay-earth still on my hands, empty bottle in it's cloth.
I sang a song with my name in it. Halyn and halyn-a were repeated at the end of the lines. It was a "song for springtime".
I laughed a little.
