Two weeks ago i performed for Veronika Mabardi, exactly in the same place where i performed with BMAD II ( " Blind Movie Action Dub ", a project initiated by M.Richelle with the company Ricochets ). This is the text "Changing Woman" she wrote after In Life/Alive, 6may 2011 :
Changing woman is a Navajo divinity, honored by the natives as the one who never gets old, walking eastwards and constantly renewing herself. Some talk of her as the earth, embodiyng cycles and seasons, figure of the women side of mankind, moving and transforming, guiding us toward balance harmony, while she goes on walking.
You didn't know it, but your feet did.
Drawing the marks of time on the pavement.
And your own steps, erasing and covering your own marks, in circles you went.
Sowing abundance, blessing the city soil with your salt.
Walking your song. Chanting the way. Writing your poem in space, covering it with rice, covering it whith corn.
You had no age. Walking towards yourself.
I thought : at this very moment, other women are walking their path, facing east, facing west, facing every direction of life, in a huge and deep circle, far from the noise of human industry.
You still walk in the dephts of me, creating a sacred space, for the dancing poem that awakens right through me, wich my mother knew from her mother, and so many mothers before, growing in circles, in spirals, in waves. This movement created by you is yet written in motionless time.
Song brings power – is a note my mum wrote in the margins of a book i found on her shelf. I never heard her say those words. But in this book, that tells about the sacred hoop, she marked the ancient wisdom words woman from all ages transmit.
I am, I am
In wisdom I walk
In beauty may I walk
The light, the dawn
It is morning 1
Happily I recover
Happily, my interior becomes cool
Happily, I go forth
My interior feeling cool, may I walk
No longer sore, may I walk
As it used to be long ago, may I walk
Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk
Happily, with abundant showers, may I walk
Happily, with abondant plants, may I walk
Happily, on a trail of pollen, may I walk
Happily may I walk
The circle of being is not physical, but it is dynamic and alive. It is what lives and moves and renews, and all the life forms we recognize - animals, plants, rocks, winds - partake of this greater life. Acknowledgments of this dynamic unity allows healing chants such as this from te night chant to heal (make a person whole again)2.
From beginning of time, you walk. I recognized your movement.
You were walking the day i agreed to live here, in this place i'd never have chosen if i had a choice.
You were walking on the bathroom flour, de day i first menstuated, and in every moment of solitude or loneliness.
You were walking that night i lost knowledge beneath a man's body.
And, when i took my little girl to feed her, all shaken by birth.
You walked on the edge of the great woods when the moose came out of it, standing frightened on the empty road.
You'll walk the day i'll leave this planet.
Every time, your temp erases fear. It was your drumming coming through me, in the dark, and the music of the those anklet bells, your anchor, your wandering roots. O, the circle, the ring, alliance, commitement, yes. ( V.Mabardi )
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Photos: V.Mabardi |
1Luci Tapahonso, in Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop
2Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop
