A Perfecting Storm

storm/stôrm/ noun

1. a violent disturbance of the atmosphere with strong winds and usually rain, thunder, lightning, or snow.
2. a tumultuous reaction; an uproar or controversy.
3. storm windows.
4. a direct assault by troops on a fortified place.

verb

1. move angrily or forcefully in a specified direction.
2. (of troops) suddenly attack and capture (a building or other place) by means of force.
3. (of the weather) be violent, with strong winds and usually rain, thunder, lightning, or snow.

storm cloud noun

1. (Physical Geography) a heavy dark cloud presaging rain or a storm
2. a herald of disturbance, anger, or violence: the storm clouds of war.

Out From The Storm Cloud: here I write about the African spirit as it moves out in the world. I write of African spirituality, medicine, arts and culture, focusing on how these have survived and are re-created in the Americas, simultaneously sustaining and re-creating this land and its people. I write about my experience of Umbanda and Candomblé, two traditions of spirituality in Brazil with ancient African origins which are expanding in new ways and new places. I write extensively about the myth, ritual and philosophy of two old cultures, African and European, two great fronts, clashing, interacting and interpenetrating one another in this “New World” made in the Americas; each seeking its destiny apart from, in relation to, and eventually through the other until there is nothing left but spent, torn apart, drowned, done and dilapidated, and the rainbow. Storm across the Atlantic: typhoon, hurricane, tornadoes across the plains. Even this complex metaphor oversimplifies, I also write of the human spirit engaging with the Spirit. I explore here myself, in relation to Africa, to the Americas, to America, to the whole, round world, to human violence and to humanity, then, again to my Self, perhaps to love, and to the Spirit. The old women gathered one night and ‘made’ my head to the spirit of the storm wind; Oyá Iyansan. Red river flooding uterine through buffalo become trampling tornado, sparking lightning passion then to mother the dead and give life to the people. So my writing inevitably portends a storm.

Storms arise from opposite sectors within a system interact dynamically seeking homeostasis, resolution; they are a dialectic of air masses. Yet storms are seasonal, part of a larger process; ‘bad weather’ as essential as ‘good weather’ in the greater movement of things, of the biosphere, of life, and our lives. If we can see rough weather from for enough outside, or from deep enough within, there are no storms. Just spirals, waves and eddies in the peace, or peace in the patterns of Nature’s howling dynamism. It’s all about view. I write simply to put forth views. And writing I feel a necessary release; this writing comes from and leads to a certain peace, despite all the bluster and mess.

Writing is itself a storm. Writing is a crazy process of creative displacement and arrangement, the placing into a new order ideas, thoughts, feelings and values that are emerging from some older, untenable relation moving towards a new one, perhaps also untenable, yet novel, full of enticing release from previous pressures. Abhorring silence even as it is mostly a silent endeavor, writing is an exploration, an attempt, a rambling into a newer, seemingly easier place through the building up of the unbearable urge, a push into what must be by the very momentum of what was, it requires randomness yet continued, sustained effort; simultaneously writing needs focus and an openness. Paradoxical. It is a natural disaster which allows a rebuilding, a fertilization of nitrogen into earth, a cleansing of air and landscape. Yet through writing we can, like we do from storms natural and emotional, meteorological and social, gain psychic, spiritual release and renewal. New life. I write, really, because if makes me feel alive. Yet writing, like storms, is full of what can be called conflict, contention, fight, war. One asserts a statement against other statements or over silence. One’s hope goes out into the world to make meaning or mayhem. What I say may rub you wrong, or rub you right, either way we have a storm brewing.

As much as there is, in my writing, (any writing), an urge to finalize, to ‘win’, and attain Truth and the certain ‘last word,’ I can only accept that I am two lungs puffing, two dark, accumulating masses of grey matter flashing ‘lighting’ back and forth, two hands poking at keys, while two eyes full of darkness peer out, looking to find meaning in what’s just come through, in the light from the text. My boyfriend often laughs at my bent, maniacal bad posture, hunchbacked while I sit writing at the computer, hours of sitting dedicated to text most of which no one will ever read. My work is nothing so grand as a storm, but stormy nonetheless, commonplace it participates in the extraordinary. Clichéd. “A storm of ideas.” Little breezes, quick flashes in a vast horizon, tiny droplets of rain upon endless earth into unending streams, creeks, rivers to oceanic evaporation; my efforts are just this, efforts. I also feel a greater Spirit speaking from Nature. It speaks eternal, powerful Truth from the simple matter in which we are embedded, in our every effort, however small, common, lacking in talent or insight. Spirit speaks from Nature as nature exist within, because of, and to arrive at, Spirit. In motion, in tumult, in its forms and facets which terrify us the most, which are most unpredictable, ungraspable and unpredictable, we can hear Spirit so loudly resound from the rub of nature upon nature, matter on matter; as biology emerges from magma, somehow comes evolution, life, somehow comes consciousness.

From the evolving swirl of nature, the storm cloud, the whirlwind Spirit speaks. In myth, we hear it evoke Mystery, the brilliant illumination of golden lightning thrown from Above and revealed in the voice of thunder, the Spirit makes us tremble before new Revelation. —Jehovah, the storm god of the ancient Hebrews grumbling a passionate love for His People from the safe distance of a cloud-hidden mountain top, in a fire that doesn’t consume yet never goes out, he scolds and consoles from a whirlwind. He echoes old Zeus of the Greeks and till today Shango, overheated Yoruba master of thunder stones and heavenly fire touched down to earth –my own Oya, spirit of the storm, flowing out from the river Niger, she is here known as the totemic orisha of tornadoes, tropical storms; she is the wild, wet wind which comes before, heralding the epiphany of thunder and lightning’s Force; herself lightning, a river of fire, its mother and first owner, from her we also gain initiatory shifts of consciousness, revelations, eureka moments of virginal, seminal understanding which sprout after forest fires in the ancient earth, awakened by ephemeral calamity, rage and distress. She rips through old understandings to go, go, go beyond, go completely beyond. Prajna Paramita out from Africa. Ferociously, like stampeding buffalo, conjuring Devi Durga Ma, she can horrify, even if tenderly she might reveal herself secretly to her children, a butterfly on the breeze, a doe tip-toeing from the forest, a maiden from the mist. Tornado across the parking lot plowing through playing field and trailer court, bison across the plains, she comes again like Pteskawin, White Buffalo Woman; she gives us ritual return, the uplift of smoke, the purity of heart, mind and soul which returns the buffalo, returns life to the people. Ever new, no thing is final in the storm’s arising, presence or effect, just change, just more; love comes after, and out of, our confusion, fear, anger and unconscious acting out. Like a child playing, after a million imaginary attempts at being grown we turn back to mom, needing to know her approval. Her smile flashes and all is right.

So my writing is a rehearsal, versions, drafts, attempts, seeking some approval. I write about religion so, as that religion strives for the ideal, the beautiful and sublime, there is thus a tendency towards the dogmatic, the didactic and pedantic, all built into the subject from the get go, another perfect storm. Nonetheless, if you can learn something from what I present here, great. If not, don’t sweat it. If you find yourself opposed to or offended by what I write, let this challenge help you verse yourself in your appreciation of your Truth as it reveals itself to you. Let it be a whetstone upon which to sharpen your blade. If you feel you must debate or correct, please, feel welcome to do so. I could stand it, my writing surely could, and, as the Spirit is always re-writing us in its own storms of creativity, I do best to fly with it, not against it. As does a storm exist only to desist, I write here to pass on, to move forward, to get by, to try, to push, to taunt, to test, to mix, to separate, to explore, to expand, to renovate, to rip apart, to throw together, to trash, to expel, to purify, to perfect, to fertilize, to inseminate, disseminate, to scatter, to splatter, to spread, to level, to share, to uplift, to carry, to impel, to drive, to spin, to twist, to stretch out, to lay flat, to level, to lay waste, to make room, to allow for creation, to pass on, to pass down, or to just pass out. In the eye of this I can stand, if only for a moment, with the Spirit, before being thrown out, blown into such creation, passing to passively enter the passion of our own susceptibility, vulnerability, our passing. In the Storm we are one even as we are many, each of us a particle of force moving both with and against the same, together.