sistere
First I am cold.It’s December, after all, and it has been dark for a few hours, and the dew of Jeff’s yard is soaking through my boots. I stand near the fire shelter where twenty-two large stones have been baking under a pyre of boards. My jeans grow prickly hot. I step back. It’s early in the evening, and I still think it’s up to me.
I had planned to go to a movie tonight. A half-hearted plan made when other plans fell through. Then in the hallway outside my room I bumped into my housemate whom I rarely bump into, and he was “getting ready for a sweatlodge.” I’d heard the term before just enough to know that I didn’t know what it was about. He invited me along, thinking I’d say no.
Just west of the fire shelter is the lodge – a frame of lashed branches wrapped in wool blankets and canvas. By the fire I strip down to a sarong, bare feet on the wet ground. Asher cleanses me with a bundle of burning sage and it feels like a blessing. I duck through the door.
Inside it is too low to stand, so I step carefully clockwise around the empty fire pit until I find a place across from the door. Jeff is already inside. I can’t see him, or anything, except the fire through the doorway and Asher’s legs as he brings in the stones.
Jeff welcomes the stones one at a time, places them into the pit. I give each an offering of tobacco from a pouch. The tiny dry leaves are invisible in the darkness, invisible on my fingertips and falling through the air, but when they hit the stones they burst like sparks. Five stones placed and Asher steps in; Jeff pulls a cover over the door.
There is no light at all in the lodge and no breeze, just the pleasant dry heat of the not-burning fire. We start with the West and with Fall. Jeff drums and sings and I sing along without knowing the words. I dance and no one can see me.
We pass around a rattle made from a gourd, and before and after we speak we rattle and Jeff pours water on the stones. It grows hotter and wet. A different wet than humid. I can feel the air in my nose and I am surprised it is still so easy to breathe. The first round is even.
The door opens and the lodge exhales and Asher brings in four more stones.
North and winter is hotter and my body breaks open, my skin disappears. I press my palms onto the ground for refreshment. Sweat streams down my wrists and gathers there in pools. My body feels old and bent under the heat, and then it is so wet it feels unborn.
East and spring is the round that undoes me – six stones and I lose my sense of certainty. I lie flat to fit myself into the inch of air just about the ground. I imagine it is cool and still. I try to keep hold of my insides and of my head but I feel myself decomposing and dispersing. It is shocking how quickly and fully wellness leaves, how slow time goes when it’s gone. And then it comes back in a rush of cold air and it seems you were just being weak.
South and the summer is perhaps hottest yet, but I sing again and speak because of course the heat isn’t the hard thing. By the close I am flat again, turned into the corner but this time only glad, for the barely perceptible probably imaginary draft under the lodge wall and the wet leaves crumbling against the canvas. I could eat these leaves, I think. It is so very hot and I am lying twisted on a thin cloth on a dirt floor in the dark and all I can think is Here I Am. I Could Eat These Leaves.
Outside I sit in the same night as before, right under the moon. I sit on the grass and I see that it is frosty by my pale bare feet, and nothing has changed about the weather but I wouldn’t call it cold anymore.
posted by tortaluga @ 10:55 AM
1 Comments:
I'd say a very happy unbirthday to you. But you know ....
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