A few months ago I met with a group of writers willing to consider the spiritual aspects ofour personal writing and life stories. We met in Circle and part of that process was ritual. What follows is a deeply healing experience I had while partaking in a renewal ceremony. Not only did I not anticipate what happened, but I certainly didn't think I'd write about it. Some experiences transcend words.
*******************************************************
“Water doesn’t wash. It remembers.” That’s one of my favorite quotes. And that’s really saying something because I am a quote fiend. Like an addict who needs her regular fix, I’ll go a long way for the twelve, eighteen or forty seven words that will instigate the next high, lift me from normalcy and deposit me into the lap of wonder. I’m an inspiration junkie.
“Water doesn’t wash. It remembers.” If the author of this quote is to be believed, instead of cleansing through hydrogen, oxygen and friction, water simply remembers clean. It remembers what was. It remembers origin. To submerge in water is to partake in renewal, regeneration, remembrance.
Thirteen had come to the circle. To remember. To bear witness. To tell the story. Thirteen had come to the circle seeking alchemy’s magical science. Instead of turning base metals into gold through the use of chemicals, we sought to turn memory into memoir through the use of language. At the center of the circle, in it’s heart, a bowl of water. It sat quietly, as any god will do, awaiting its time. One night, this night, thirteen had come to seal the circle. And water got its chance.
I watched as, one by one, each of the thirteen bathed in its gift. Baptized in Memory. Restored to Origin. A rejoining was occurring, as grace settled like a sigh around the shoulders the circle. My heartbeat quickened as the bowl of water was placed before me. I stepped forward and peered into its depths. The reflection of a younger woman--my 28-year-old self-- stared back in invitation. It was enough. I remembered.
"Angi, I want you to move your toes," these were the first words I heard upon waking from a surgery that had been described to me as serious, but routine. The six hour procedure in surgical unit #3 was devoted to removing a disc in my neck and replacing it with bone to alleviate the pressure of a pinched nerve."Angi move your toes." I heard again. I did. So I could not comprehend the frustration in the voice as it commanded "Angi move your toes!" I was disoriented in the dark, thick world of anesthesia, but I managed to say "I’m trying," as I struggled with all my might to move the toes I thought were already moving.
Four more hours and one emergency surgery later, pain exploded me into consciousness. My neck and face were a raging fire but no one could tell me where the fire came from nor how to put it out. My toes ignored my plea to move, but so did my fingers, arms, shoulders, knees, hips and hands. My body was a weighted thing, and drowning. While I slept, someone had filled my muscles’ pockets with stones and they sank heavily on the floor of my body, pinning me to the bed. My bladder was a scream, ripping through me with a serrated edge. Incapable of any natural release, it howled in protest yet no one heard. I called to the nurse’s station. No one came. I thought I might burst apart or faint from the pain. I would have gratefully urinated all over myself and the bed and anyone else for that matter, to relieve myself of the agony. But the bladder ignored my commands just as the toes did.
When relief came in the form of a catheter, the nurse was moving slowly. Hours passed in each moment, while she removed the catheter from it’s container, donned her plastic gloves, pulled back the sheets, opened my legs and swabbed my skin with iodine. Fear clamped a cold fist on my heart. I was afraid she would hurt me but more afraid she would not help me. Caught like an animal, my heartbeat raced with panic. I resolved to be brave for nothing could be worse than the pressure threatening to burst me apart. I was wrong. The nurse could not locate my urethra. "Everybody’s made differently," she said as she fumbled between my legs exposing me to the hallway and the patients, visitors, and employees passing by the open door. She had to call another nurse. Each tick of the clock was a gathering storm threatening to break bladder and sanity both. When the second nurse arrived to deftly insert the catheter, a sharp pain punctured my groin and the remaining parchment -thin shred of my dignity. Hot solid tears slipped quietly down my cheeks. Part relief, part humiliation, they were to be the last of their kind for a long time.
To dismember is to take apart, to sever. Like the knife that cut the soft underbelly of my throat, slicing through muscle and bone, to press violently into the delicate space that my spinal cord called home, that hot July day in 1997 severed more than flesh and nerves. That day’s blade went deep, too deep, dismembering body and soul, flesh and spirit.
They waited. Those in the circle bore witness while my mind traveled distances only memory can traverse. A ripple across my reflection in the bowl took me, unexpectedly, to Africa, to the lap of story, to hear a lion’s tale. In the Disney movie the Lion King, Rafiki, shaman to the tribe, escorts Simba to a sacred pool of water where Simba can visit his father’s spirit. "Oh that’s just my reflection," mutters Simba in disgust as he peers into the water. "No," Rafiki says, "Look harder." And this time Simba looks beyond reflection and into the water, into a deeper truth. There he sees his father, Mufasa. “Remember who you are,” Mufasa admonishes his son. "You have forgotten me and so forgotten your place in the circle of life. Remember. Who. You. Are." Simba, having been traumatized earlier in the story, has experienced dis-membering and now suffers the severing of his lion’s pride, his home and his place in the circle. In doing so he’s lost his identity and forgotten his purpose. Gazing into the pool of water, he remembers. Or, rather, he experiences re-membering: a realignment with his authentic self. His father, challenging him from the depths of memory, reawakens Simba’s purpose and beckons him to his place in the circle of life. The water, containing spirit, remembers Simba back to his original state. He has the body of a lion and the heart of a king. He belongs to a tribe. With memory comes identity restored, so Simba rushes back to the rock called pride to claim his place and live his legacy. With memory, the lion returns to the pride, and pride is restored to the lion.
I am the walking wounded. But I am walking. Like Simba, I hear Spirit beckon me to reclaim my place in the circle of life. It’s a long journey back. And one night, this night, I stand among the tribe of thirteen and bend deep into the bowl of water to see more than my reflection. I see who I was, who I am, who I can be. I hear the whispered promise in the bottom of the bowl. I bring the water to my throat, where the surgeon’s scalpel broke skin and spine and trust. The water sinks deep into all that was dismembered. And they’re back. Big, fat, wet tears trailing glory down my cheeks. Water for memory and salt for preservation. I catch the few that fall from my chin and offer them to the center of the circle, for I have more than enough. The water fills me to overflowing. I. Am. Remembered.
Have you seen our latest project? On a recent trip through the world of imagination, I stumbled across an old, forgotten graveyard. The sculptures, stones, moss, trees and leaves were alive, whispering the wisdom of ages. I hope the haunting beauty of their message shines through this film. We're working on a coffee table book of the guardians who allowed me to photograph them and the magic places they call home. 
Phantasmagoria
In other news:
Duirwaighs and Dreamfields: A True Fairy Tale
