These are the conditions for growth.
Part 5 of the Digital Oracle Deck series
This series explores the symbols found on 42 oracle cards developed through co-creative play in my fall 2022 Image Word Mystery course. Now, I’m taking a deep-dive into divination and meaning-making — sharing my work with you while I transform these cards into animated loops & audio tracks for a new kind of oracle deck.
In today’s paid portion, subscribers get to listen to the new song I’ve been working on. It’s very ethereal.
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On the summer solstice in 2015, I took a break from my dad’s death bed and walked to the river. I gathered handfuls of fragrant mugwort the way he and I had done together for decades, rolling soft leaves between my fingers and inhaling this essential note of home. Knowing I wouldn’t be coming back to this land again after he died, I pulled a stem up from the roots, wrapped it in wet paper towel, and tucked the bundle in a ziplock baggie.
Mugwort travels by root, able to go dormant in its wintery home and then spring to life again as the soil warms.
I thought that if there was a chance I could keep this little root system alive long enough to make it through the hours and days and weeks of deathbed disorientation, if I could get enough of my shit together to get this plant back up to my place in Portland and put it in the garden there, maybe I could hold on to something familiar in the face of so much loss.
A miracle: it worked.
Tangling with the tomatoes and cats and cannabis plants, it thrived. And each time the roots spread, I pulled stems up and passed them to friends who wanted this dreaming plant in their own gardens— wrapping the root ball in a moist paper towel for the journey.
By the time we left that little garden rental, we had buried three good old cats underneath the mugwort canopy. Then, we uprooted together: Us, Mother Mugwort and some shovels of soil packed into a gardening pot, rolling away from home in a U-Haul van. Again, trying to keep the familiar with me.
She somehow lived in that pot, blooming season over season, through five shitty apartments and three states. Then, suddenly, she died last winter— our first winter in Iowa. I kept waiting to see the new shoots this spring… but they just never came. I eventually dug my hand into the soil and it was just empty, like the roots had never been there at all.
these are the conditions for growth: you must root to rise as above, so below a call for nourishment. you must root to rise tend your garden a call for nourishment a practice in giving to receive tend your garden before you harvest- a practice in giving to receive. remember: the earth is your anchor. before you harvest- as above, so below- remember, the earth is your anchor. these are the conditions for growth [pantoum contemplating the "roots" oracle card, August 2023]
What are your conditions for growth?
My friend Rachel tells me it takes something like a hundred years to build one single inch of topsoil here on the prairie. A hundred years before there’s something to hold on to. I’ve certainly felt like that before.
“Bloom where you’re planted”- is this a Bible thing? Or just an inspirational chalk-sign thing? Whichever it is, it doesn’t really work that way. You can’t just throw any plant in any location then reap a bountiful harvest.
Growth is about a system of changing conditions working together to promote life.
What are yours?
I’ll be pulling on these threads more as I continue the Digital Oracle Deck project—
But this week I’ve been over here in this cozy spot, playing around with music.
So, free subscribers, I’ll see you next Friday— and in the meantime, you can share your notebook pages with me in the chat!:
Paid Supporters:
Here’s the audio track I’ve been working on this week (which has nothing to do with roots, or maybe it does but I don’t know it yet?), “I’ve Seen It All/ I Am It All”.
Here, I’m improvising vocals then finding happy accidents using a very willy-nilly layering technique.
It’s another one that’s very easy to get lost in… have fun wandering with me…
xo,
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