Seed Paper: Forgotten stories sown into the soil
written and performed in May 2023
Sharing
Through my time creating this piece, I continually stripped away the components that made it permanent. I decided that the original poems I would share would only exist within the performance, merely living as a vague memory in the heads of those who witness it. Not only did I want this as an act against attachment to what we create, but I believe it mirrors the stories of survivors as well. Our healing — in body, mind, and land — is often unseen, alongside the gruesome stories of assault that are also hidden in our landscapes. The papers were crafted from plants growing in my own backyard and plants from the site of past traumas where my seed sowing performance eventually took place; by combining elements of home and estranging traumas in my site-specific work I map the sensorial experiences that the body remembers as home. My greatest expectation from this project is decomposition. The paper must be imperfect, fragile, vulnerable to the elements, and so must the words that I speak as I sow the seed paper. After this ritual, what I hope will be left of this is the patient growth of native grasses and a ritual that can be shared with others. We are all keepers of rituals, of stories, of secrets; through acknowledging how these are intertwined through the body’s connection to land we can sow intentions of healing. I hope to befriend the seeds and the soil, reshaping the narratives we hold to the past and future, converging on our present forms. Through this hope, I want to share the process of this practice with anyone open to the power of impermanence through lost words and sowing native seed paper: I call you to try this seed-sowing practice in a way that fits your individual landscape (both mental and physical)!
Remembering
The stories of survivors are often hidden in the nooks of each space we inhabit; I revisited the first spot where it all happened, a granite rock in the foothills. I ran my fingers over the little cracks and divots, feeling the memory of an abuse that changed my life. I laid my head down on this piece of earth that had once felt tainted. In that moment, with eyes closed, I could feel the kiss of a breeze that made the nearby grasses dance, and I heard a heartbeat: not solely my own, but a heartbeat of the pulsing energy that binds the loamy New Mexican soil to all its inhabitants. In the process of remembrance, I found that there is no possible disentanglement between the joys and tragedies of the body and the land. I was a body, violated on the rock that outlooks the city I had once called home. But I am also a body that may reclaim the power in decomposition; the power in falling apart, supporting vibrant growth once again.
Sowing
The body is not a container,
it’s a web.
The body is the here and now,
but it’s also a particle in two places
at once.
The body is not a vessel,
it’s a node; a network.
The body is not the sky, not the soil, not the animal, the beast,
the plant, the fungus, the mountains,
not the rain, nor the rivers nor the canyons, but the filaments that tether
every process together in its multiplicity.
The body is not singular, rather it is infinitely plural — endlessly reborn into states
of unforgiving
impermanence.
I’m here to celebrate the body in all its forms with Earth: how the landscape mirrors a body, ripping at the seams and filling the cracks with the blood of soil and water. The buried stories stewing underground, sustaining all of life. The story of growth and decomposition — things are made to fall apart because they are meant to fall apart. It is for this reason that I focus my performance piece on materials that decompose in the soil and words that will stay left off the page only to be spoken. So here I stand, with the embryos of native grasses, native flowers, impermanent words. Through the seed paper I have created, I sow my words as a survivor, as a gesture of gratitude to the ecosystem, as a gesture of reclaiming space for healing. Because soil is the beginning — and end — of life. Because soil is solace.
Supplementary poem:
Torn and Sown
Hands in the soil,
two large parentheses
encircling a quiet identity,
intertwined with the land for all the gifts of impermanence
she grants us.
Hands in the soil,
ripping, digging, tearing,
letting the incisions fill with the blood
of Earth:
water;
fingers running through the Earth’s
scalp.
Caressing, caring, tending.
Hands reaching into the soil:
first we are seam rippers,
then we are seed sowers,
hoping to transform the upturned soil into a
story of thriving
seedlings.
Each mighty sprout an
added word to the rough draft in the story
of collective existence.
Relish this moment, in
which the soil beneath your
feet is the beginning – and end –
of life.
A lost explorer in the
meaning of mending,
I stand with the embryos
of native grasses and flowers,
awaiting vibrant growth on these
nooks
of degraded land.
With hands in the soil,
we marinate in our being as a lost
breath of words,
and sustained rituals, binding
the body
to the land, in all its cycles.