Tag: rewilding

  • Fasting Out the Funk

    Photo by Dylan Vo on Unsplash

    There’s something appealing about taking up fasting again. I laid awake at my normal lay awake time last night (2.45am to at least 3.30am) contemplating taking up fasting. Not the hardcore fasting where you go for days on end. I’ve already proved to myself that I have that kind of willpower that it takes to pull that off. I lasted 7 days, or maybe it was 10 — I forget — when I was much younger. I actually needed to will myself to get back into eating after that period of time, whichever duration it was.

    No, what I’m talking about is something closer to intermittent fasting. I haven’t thought out the details, but I can see limited fasting as a mental and spiritual exercise. Besides, I’m starting to have a hate side of the love/hate relationship with food emerge again.

    Or maybe it was the thinking about that summer and autumn in Seattle before returning to Minnesota. Those days, I had to remind myself to eat. Some days I didn’t bother. I was definitely on a “I hate food” binge at the time. Coffee was good. I drank a river of coffee during that time. Smoked quite a few smokes too.

    That was all fine and dandy when it was just me living out on my own, but the family would worry about my mental state and health if I approached things that way now, so it would be better to just limit and eliminate some of my food consumption rather than all-out, hardcore fasting.

    I’m not sure what I would want to accomplish. I’ve got my eigengrau moods that come more often than they go. And it wouldn’t hurt to rewild my spirit a bit. A touch of hunger has a way of bringing out the feral.

    Maybe I can fast out the funk?

    There, a title for this post — catchy and topical. Just the kind of thing SEO managers love.

    Have you fasted? Any particular reason for doing so if you have? Do you think it is weird and unhealthy? Comment away!

  • roads and halls

    sage bundles in a pot for smudging
    Photo by Ginny Rose Stewart on Unsplash

    I walked the beaded hallways red with you and you did not see, not really. Yes yes that’s very beautiful you said as we walked not the beauty of buckskin and ruddy skin. You saw only the patterned beads.

    You did not hear the heartbeat drums causing the red hallways to thrum and pulse as you raced towards the light, making sure you could say you had experienced it all for yourself, but you did not hear, nor see.

    You did not feel their blood on your skin, nor the sweat, nor the tears. You said you knew it all, had read it in a book you couldn’t recall the title of, nor author. And you pulled me along, not letting me linger to “feel the feels”. You told me you would find the book in the library for me so I could feel.

    I reached for the medicine up in the night, but you bound me to prevent “my escape”.

    I spoke to ravens and stones.

    You just stared at me.

  • acorn man

    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
    sun and shadow
    dancing the bones
    between the tonights
    laid over growing
    groundcover dark
    within the wode

    acorn man mad they
    call his wanders
    under oak over stone
    pond water mirrors
    his autumn ways

    hey hey they call of above
    do not walk yourself lost
    black laughter rising
    he laughs along
    wanderwalking the wode
    acorn man disguised

  • Campfire Sessions — 06 apr 25

    Campfire
    Photo by Ville Palmu on Unsplash

    It’s time to be off, they said.

    There was not much left of the once-long stick I had been using to poke at the dying embers for a spell. Each time I poked, bright orange sparks would jump from the rippling ruby coals. For no particular reason, doing so brought me a flash of joy.

    I have always been a firebug. Maybe that was why.

    I turned to Raven, their feathers ruddy in the glow of the remains of my campfire. Off where? I asked.

    You know, they said.

    (more…)

  • red dirt

    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
    sitting the red dirt
    casting needle bone raw
    hey fox, ho owl 
    what tales do winds tell?

    given to ghost on promise
    tied leather, wrapped lace 
    turning on bright flame
    if the memory serves you
    well 

    sitting the red dirt
    between pine and swell 
    hey owl, ho fox with
    promises winds tell

  • we stone

    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
    here we stone
    under her sun
    & feverwarm

    here we loam
    ruddy that leaf &
    deadwood

    here we stone

  • Rewilding: An Inquiry

    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

    When I think too much, these are the kinds of thinks I think about. I would not blame someone for stepping slowly backwards after reading this blast of questions. [MR]

    What is the purpose of ritual? What makes it an apparent requirement for spiritual practice? Is it an actual requirement or is it perpetuation based on tradition?

    What is the purpose of ritual tools? Are they actually necessary to evoke/invoke spirits or deity? Again, are they perpetuated due to that hobgoblin, tradition?

    When you practice your beliefs (faith, if you prefer), to you go forth or call in? Do you seek to empty, seek to fill or is this a null question with a null response?

    Is it faith? Or is it gnosis?

  • smudging space

    sage bundles in a pot for smudging
    Photo by Ginny Rose Stewart on Unsplash
    i smudge space most days
    inviting spirits to my smoke at
    campfires within indoor plains
    for no reason at all
    but to give them space to
    rest their weary before
    they carry on & then on

  • A mercuric lake

    Campfire
    Photo by Ville Palmu on Unsplash

    I have many thoughts trapped inside my head. I cannot free them because they are thoughts without words to go with them, or the words that might go with them are inadequate to express those thoughts. Trying to express those thoughts feels too much like, as Alan Watts would have put it, trying to bite my own teeth.

    If I managed to construct those thoughts into something that could be understood, if I could find the words and unstop this mute mouth — would anyone read them anyway? I mean, really read. I am fairly certain that they cannot be words that can be heard, so I do not dare speak.

    I have for a very long time tried to personally touch these thoughts, hoping to better understand people who struggled in much the same way as I do now to express inexpressible thoughts. Now that I am on that path, I understand their struggle. There are no words, we need a new language altogether to get at the words needed to explain explain explain. Maybe, I think these thoughts can only be expressed sideways, with a slipstream sense.

    After I slip into the wilds, do you think you could find me? Would you want to?

    The buzz of insects over a mercuric lake…

  • two-twenty

    sunlight shining through old growth woods
    Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
    my body is my drum
    humming at two-twenty
    thumps per minutes
    from my thumb, terraforming
    my world before my eyes
    turning inside to see
    where everything is
    leaves and evergreens
    with buzz wing dragonflies
    dancing pastel skies
    slumbering in dream
    under a springtime sun

    hanging words on oak
    my heart bursts wide