i came away with a pear, an oak gall, a smudge stick that children had made. 2 pods of Love in the Mist, seeds inside.
everything was free. The food tent, 4 things, one gluten free, 2 vegetarian, 1 pork. I got some of each. You got your plate and fork and moved along, filling your plate however you wished. When it was gone, you took your plate and utensil and stood in line to wash them. You washed your plate. set it to dry for someone else. All the plates, nicely set to dry, all the PLATES. All the Forks, used, washed, set to dry, used again over and over.
we sat. on the ground. ate. just over the way people sang . Emrie leaned into Alyssia, who made a little movie for Emries father. She leaned into Alyssia and sang along with the performing person, when their voice rose high, hers did too, She sang. Un Self Conscious
I don't know what i want to say. the day was subdued. as it should have been. Work was going on amidst what i say here. It's a work week. We stayed till 4 something and Rising Appalachia hadn't gotten there. They'd been at Berkley. Maybe the fire there? But it was ok because of how it was. Soft. Quiet.
we had to park over and across the road. walk in. Going back, we really SAW where we were. Down a short road. On either side, chain link fence demarking homesteads scraped to deep dirt. Many. a world of chain link. repeating and repeating.
On the way up, there was a point when there was a FLOOD of feeling, just coming....a flood of feeling and me, the Cry not Cry person ....cried. Tears. At that point it wasn't anything about what i KNOW about what happened, but simply from what rose from the land...an energy of Great Grief. I don't want to give words to it. I don't know enough. And then, there, walking back to where we parked. I don't know what to say about it there. The trees. many burned. Maybe the word burn scar? Maybe a sense of being wounded. ?
i need to go again. It's more, so much more than i had ever imagined and i have no idea what it might mean, or can mean....
