Beach Finds…. A Series Of Pieces From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…….What’s Next?.....
by Bernie Bell - 07:39 on 30 January 2023
Beach Finds….
I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, but I do look at some folks pages – not many – just some – Jackie Morris being one of them as she presents such interesting and beautiful things… https://twitter.com/JackieMorrisArt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
On her Twitter page I saw this… https://twitter.com/nicolakidsbooks/status/1618946340020719623?cxt=HHwWjsDUtczH0_csAAAA
So, I emailed Jackie, thus….
“Mornin’
I’m not on Twitter, so, would you mind forwarding this to Nicola Davis for me?
We’ve found all sorts - but this is a dooozy….
I wrote about it here….
https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/07/31/the-things-you-find-on-an-orkney-beach-2/
There are lots of interesting stones, skulls and bits of wood - finding them isn’t too surprising.
And there’s the fishing floats… https://theorkneynews.scot/2019/08/12/the-joy-of-fishing-floats/
And there’s the coconut…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/06/28/memory-musings/
And, and, and…..
Mind theesen’
B”
Nicola’s book looks interesting….
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A Series Of Pieces From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…….
The Editorial staff at ‘Emergence’ …. https://emergencemagazine.org/ have selected stories from their archive that navigate the past through ancestral legacies - stories that work to recover traditions of knowledge, heal fractures, and reclaim connection to land. I’ll proceed to post them one by one, each day.
Before doing so I’ll mention a book called 'Of Water and the Spirit' and by Malidoma Patrice Some. It's a true story, set in the 1950's of a young boy in an African tribe who is taken away by the Jesuits when he's very little. 15 years later he runs away, or I should say walks away, and back to his tribe.
But he no longer understands or speaks their language, and has forgotten the tribal ways. He's divided - in two worlds. He's missed his initiation which the other boys have already experienced. The tribe live very much in tune and in touch with nature and the ancestors. Malidoma had also lost this.
About ten years ago I had started reading the book then I became ill and wasn't reading anything much.
I picked up the book again when I started to recover and read this.........................
"Dogo, who was seated next to him, spoke. "When the chief asked me to consult with the spirits, I did not know what to expect. All I knew was, that when Bofing performed his divination, he could not guarantee that his medicine was going to work during Boar because he could not locate the boy's Sie (double).
I was alarmed when I heard him say this. The Sie is a person's spirit, the part of him or her that is connected to the ancestral world. A person who is suffering from serious psychological problems is said to have left his spirit somewhere. Living away from your double is like living with chaos, terror and insecurity."
I put the book down, sat back , and thought, "Goodness me!" That just about encapsulated what I felt had happened to me. I had lost myself, I was no longer whole. In the book the tribe work through a long initiation with Malidoma to help to make him whole again.
That feeling of loss, fragmentation, and dis-harmony is often how people dealing with depression feel - like a light has gone out, your personal light has gone out, and it's hard to see how or when it will 'switch on' again.
But it can be done.
Recently I have been unwell again - more physically than emotionally - though the two are, in my case, inextricably connected. And once again Malidoma’s ancestors helped me. We are all one.
Here is the first of the pieces from ‘Emergence’…
by Kinitra Brooks
“The more I learn about my great-grandmother, the more I come to understand the rootworking tradition to be a vital yet undervalued form of knowledge for our times.”
In “Myrtle’s Medicine,” Kinitra Brooks revives a lineage of rootworking that ended with her late great-grandmother, Mama Myrt. Calling on historical examples of intellectual matriarchs such as Nanny of the Maroons, Zora Neal Hurston, Tituba, and more, she weaves together intellectual and rootworking traditions into the contemporary frame of conjure feminism, and reflects on the meaning and beauty of embodied ways of knowing.
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From the illuminating to the disturbing…that’s life…..
What’s Next?
Notice I ask ‘What’ not ‘Who’.
The person I refer to as Darth Vader has been sacked…. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-64439757
I’m not celebrating much as I’m well aware that another corrupt sleaze-ball is likely to take his place.
There are plenty to choose from in the Tory Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Here’s one I made earlier….. https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/07/16/skaill-bay-12th-july-2020/
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