The Go! Team, Crossroads, Book Magic, Gods of Jade and Shadow, Hail Mary, Astra Taylor

Monday, 9 March 2020

I woke up exhausted because I slept poorly last night. I had been feeling under the weather on Sunday, and despite hating to nap, I had to give in and sleep for a few hours during the day. However, the air is like wine (as Laura Moriarty always used to on nice days at SPD) today in Northampton and I went for my second run of the season.

I used to have a more austere running practice—no headphones—but I’ve been toying with running to music. I listened to one of my long-time favorite feel good albums: Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team which sounds like playground clapping games and jump rope and the old Sesame Street video about how crayons are made. I ran to Childs Park and back, crisscrossing my way through the whorl of hills west of Pleasant Street. If you live in Northampton, too, and you see a strawberry-faced out of shape trans woman running around, it’s me (be kind). Anyway, between the post-run endorphins and the aforementioned wine-like air, I am feeling more energized to sit down and write in my reading blog (which I am trying to make a practice of starting my week with). But what to write about?

Last week, I went to visit my friend Luna in Easthampton, in part to deliver a table and but really to just hang out with her and meet her adorable new cat. Luna is a friend with whom I tend to talk about fantasy and sci-fi. SFF is sort of this oxbow lake pinched off from the flow of my career, such as it is, in poetry. I’ve written about it here (Philip Pullman’s new Book of Dust series, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season) but if I imagine my readers (step one: imagine that I have readers, step two: conjure up an image of them), because of the course of my life I imagine them as poets, mostly indifferent to SFF (with a few significant exceptions!).

When I hang out with Luna, I sometimes end up imagining this other life in writing I could have had, in which the focus could have been writing novels about misfit magical youths and their misadventures. To this day, when I think about my lifetime writing goals, I still want to write a novel of the kind that helped me survive childhood. Survive childhood sounds dramatic—I don’t mean to imply that I suffered more than most. I don’t think I did. Just that childhood is a time of structural disenfranchisement. I think of kids as being generally subject to the whims of the world without really having meaningful agency within it.

Even though I haven’t yet started my YA fantasy project, wrapped up as I am in the book of bella, and the auto-fiction that I’m also working on, my interest in SFF shows up in other ways—both the ones that I’ve already mentioned, like writing about it here on occasion or talking to friends about it, but also, in my spirituality and my pedagogical practice.

To wit: I am participating in the next Crossroads: Stories of Queer Spirit[1] hosted by my friend April at the Majestic. I’m planning to talk about Book Magic, which is, well, sort of my private belief that all these stories of magic contain some grains of true magic, in that the magic of telling stories helps people survive, or understand themselves, or reconcile themselves to life in this world, or dream other ways to be, as well as often embedding traditional or ancestral magical practices in the form or content of the narrative. At the Crossroads, I plan to talk—as personally and without distancing myself as I can—about how Book Magic has been a part of my life. My hope is that in naming it, I can articulate something that other people have felt, perhaps even without having put a name to it. Maybe there is a community of us who feel this way and if I hold space publicly for it, we can call it into being together, a common wealth of inspiration of solace and connection and possibility.

I said that this is part of my pedagogy too, and I mean it! From May 8-14, I will be running a workshop at School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, NC called (you guessed it) Book Magic, whose still skeletal course description is as follows:

In this class, we will take as a given that the magical systems outlined in children’s chapter books and other fantastic literature all contains a grain of truth. Through reading and practice, we will investigate the corollary possibility that we could write our own magical systems into being.

I’m hoping to test out a version of this before I go, so please get in touch if you are local to Western Mass and are interested in participating.

After I left Luna’s place the other day, I had to go to Book Moon because it’s so close and because I can’t not buy books, however impecunious I am (usu. p. impecunious). And because of its proprietors are Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, it is really strong on fantasy. Walking near the dyke with April recently, we discussed the problem of the eurocentrism in fantasy as it pertained to my workshop. I let it be known that I was on the lookout for more fantasy writers who drew on other traditions. Serendipitously, I found Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which tells the story of Casiopea Tun, a girl in 1920s Yucatán who frees a Mayan God of Death.

One of several aspects of this book I really like (aside from its glossary of Mayan terms and its Jazz Age setting), is the way that Moreno-Garcia gets at how gods are fed with tribute (patan in the book) which seems to encompass sacrifice in the at least dual senses of elements of the living body (e.g. hair and blood) as well as qualities like worship and attention. Attention and repetition, ritual as repeated action, have mundane and spiritual qualities which, when engaged in collectively, amplify the power of what is being attended, repeated.

I said the rosary recently for the first time in a long time with my family and other mourners in a funeral home in San Antonio to help send my grandmother on her way. It occurs to me now, in the wake of reading Gods of Jade and Shadow, that we were also feeding Mary the tribute of our collective invocation.

Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen

We hailed her, confirmed her status in relationship to/as the divine, and our status in relation to her, before asking her to intercede for us, turning the traditional religion of my family, which itself obscures other older traditions—what were “we” “before”?

Where am I taking the us of my family, if I really insist on pushing idiosyncratic personal notions—my woo shit—further into the collective; the breath inside the etymology of spirituality turning towards the (hopefully elective) bonds in the etymology of religion. Does my thinking around this converge with the thinking I’ve been doing about the term democracy (having been turned onto Astra Taylor’s work by my friend Charlotte) which I had thought energetically depleted? And if so, where? There are the camp meetings of the awakened and the endless meetings which freedom is said to be, and I’m feeling called to walk between them.

[1] CROSSROADS is a meeting place for all those who worship, pray, and make magic in the margins. It is a gathering of witches and heretics, hermits and revolutionaries, shadow-dwellers and truth-tellers. We are survivors, edge-walkers, and freaks claiming our connections with the Divine. Through storytelling we are offered a mirror in which to see our selves more clearly, to understand our place in the world, and to expand our perception of what is CROSSROADS is a meeting place for all those who worship, pray, and make magic in the margins. It is a gathering of witches and heretics, hermits and revolutionaries, shadow-dwellers and truth-tellers. We are survivors, edge-walkers, and freaks claiming our connections with the Divine. Through storytelling we are offered a mirror in which to see our selves more clearly, to understand our place in the world, and to expand our perception of what is possible.

This is an event intended to share, honor, and receive stories of queer spiritualities. Stories can range from individual experiences in time to overarching themes in one's life, or anything in between. Topics may include ways that people engage in ritual; how LGBTQIA+ identities intersect with religion/spirituality (or not); times of questioning and struggle; ecstatic moments; solo or group religious experiences; healing and recovery journeys of all kinds; the spiritual dimensions of gender and sexuality; relationships with deity, ancestors, and/or plant/animal/spirit allies; the role of spirituality in political work; and anything else that feels like it belongs here. Storytellers are asked to give content warnings when relevant, and attendees are encouraged to take care of themselves as needed.

We will hear stories from a program of readers hosted by April Gray Robin, with several breaks throughout. Afterwards space will open up for folks to hang out, talk, and connect till the bar closes. Come for a night of revelation and celebration!

✰ FROM APRIL ✰

My vision for this night is to normalize talking about spirituality in queer spaces, to stoke the fire in our hearts, to support us in feeling less alone, and to tend the need for soul-full community. In no way do I imagine or want for us to have the same spiritualities. Rather I imagine that what brings us here is a pull toward mystery, a deep curiosity about the fabric of the universe, and a reverence for the unknowable.

Each one of us offers something beautifully unique to this conversation. Our experiences and practices of spirituality are as different as we are, and simultaneously I believe we may find a sense of unity in our convictions as queer people desiring liberation...

We are not trying to fit in; we are trying to burn down that which seeks to confine us. We are not out to redeem the faith of our (grand)parents. We do not want mainstream religion to "accept" us into the fold of lukewarm neo-liberalism. We are critical of the ways state religion, particularly Christianity, has been taken up as an ideological and material tool of colonization, genocide, imperialism, and capitalism. So, too, are we critical of the appropriation and commodification of spiritual practices for the purpose of wealth and fame.

We are anti-fascist, anti-zionist, and pro-abolition. We seek the downfall of all that exploits life for profit and endangers our communities, and our spiritualities are an expression of that seeking. We are full of rage and grief and terror. We reject platitudes of hope and comfort in the face of very real systemic violence.

We connect with the Divine in meaningful ways that align with our values and embolden us to be our bravest, kindest selves. We are outcasts and prophets, here to consecrate our words, to create sacred space, to bear witness to and learn from each other, to weave a web among us, to make the Mighty Dead proud.
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If you are interested in sharing a story at a future CROSSROADS event, please contact April at aprilgrayce@gmail.com