Public Ritual Happens
"hungry land spirits there???" & journal
I do not take pictures of offerings in the woods because it makes me feel like a tourist instead of a local and the woods can tell the difference.
Heaps of raw onion, mango pits, avocado skins, gladiola, sprigs of rosemary, mussel shells, American coins…
In the woods I am never on my way to see a person.
This season I’ve observed, informally, how people perform rituals in public spaces out of necessity. (I am meant to learn about necessity now)
and revisited scenes of food mysteriously placed among/within city trees
On a walk, and stop to look at various breads carpeting a tree’s rectangular allotment. Stop and others will stop to look too. (I am meant to inspire others to look now)
————— “hungry land spirits there???” a friend offers —————
Are spirits/energies acting through people who think they are disposing of waste ,but are in fact feeding the land spirits (or something else) ?
Cost effective city infrastructure becomes defining shape for the placement of things, such as these hot dog buns in Baltimore City. The open, elongated ovals of the hot dog buns become wing-like: a child’s first drawing of a butterfly modeled in dough. The openness of the buns could welcome each a shiny penny. The semi-circle concrete boundary walls were once situated end to end but have drifted apart.
Someone notices for the first time a hollow in a stump because the blueberries are going mushy and must go somewhere. The land spirits go mmyummummn
on a narrow strip of grass between sidewalk and busy street.
or
Someone wishes for abundance- for a sweet love- for guidance, so they walk to the farmer’s market and back and deposit blueberries in a bell-shaped hollow of a tree stump along Franklin Street
Excess bread along Eastern Parkway I mistook for rocks from far away, during Sukkot festivities.
October
I was walking with my headphones on when a girl asked me if i was Jewish I said yes a little uncertainly because I don’t practice Judaism but my family is Jewish. She called her other friend over to explain to me the Sukkot tradition. I took my headphones off and placed them funnily around my neck while Norah Jones continued to play at an undetectable volume. While I held the lemon, pointed tip up, in my left hand and held the bundle of myrtle etc in my right hand and repeated a prayer after a third girl. All the people in the park must know I am new here for going along with this, I thought. But I wanted to know what it would feel like and I hadn’t interacted with people much that day. I repeated the prayer. The original girl seemed very pleased, happy. I thought of my ancestors who emigrated from Latvia to Coney Island and how they practiced Judaism. I thought of my great great grandmother Etka who is the family member I feel closest to although she died long before I was born. I thought of her while repeating the prayer and holding the citrus and myrtle, thought of how «citrus» and «myrtle» might symbolize a bridge to the outlines of my own belief system. I thought of Etka sending me the message “yellow flowers”, how I was unsure of what to do with that message for a long time. Throughout this spontaneous public ritual, a little boy on a raptor-shaped 4-wheeler whirred around in circles. Dogs kicked up dry dirt, and people spoke on the phone. I thought of how the girl instructing me in prayer held eye contact longer than anyone I’d interacted with up until that moment. When it was over I stood behind a big welcoming tree.
I always stop to smell roses. Most of the roses here have not had a scent. Must be the rat poison in the soil or something. This evening, one rose finally had a scent. It felt important, finally, a rose with a scent, so I lingered. I noticed a girl on the stoop next door watching me smell the rose. She had her bike and was getting ready to go out. She asked if it had a smell and I said yes, this one does. (I am meant to learn about necessity now) (I am meant to inspire others to look now) She came down the steps with her bike and smelled the rose. She said she did not smell anything.
As I’m writing this I wonder if she would’ve repeated a prayer after me if I had asked. If I had a prayer to recite. A prayer to «rose».
On the way back home I sat in the park to write and was once again approached by Jewish girls who asked me if I was Jewish. I told them I'd already done the prayer with the items in my hands. The girl told me the variety of plant materials symbolized the different types of Jews in the world. They handed me packs of tea lights, rummaging for even more tea lights and informative materials. The package said "The Jewish Woman's Guide to Lighting”. I asked them what the prayer meant. They said, summarizing in broken English, that the prayer is about Jewish women bringing light into the world. They said the world as it is now is not how it it supposed to be. I almost started crying thinking of the genocide taking place. How it has been over a year already. I wished to sit with the light in my hearts eye and did not know what to say.