pastell

some people might know that my one main spiritual practice at the moment is burning pieces of paper with my hopes and intentions written on them. i started doing it for trans day of remembrance last year.

i see writing the hopes down as giving it a physical form, and burning it as scattering that hope to permeate into the world, in the form of ashes.

i burned four pieces of paper tonight. alone, in the cold using matches against concrete.

the first was for brianna ghey. i wrote her name out, and a couple phrases: "rest in power," and "trans solidarity forever."

i drew a little trans pride flag with highlighters, too.

and then i folded the square into an origami heart, and burned it.

rest easy, sis. we will free us, yet.

something i've been trying to do over the past few months is develop some rituals. i don't mean day-to-day ones, like a breakfast routine or an evening wind-down routine--although i'm trying to do that, too--i mean rituals on the cultural scale.

for years i had felt that i Had No Culture. i was almost envious of people who i percieved to have more of a culture than me, like an indian acquaintance of mine who does bharatanatyam dance. eventually i saw a tweet pointing out how white people, particularly americans like me, acting like they have no culture effectively establishes american whiteness as the default, and how that's a tool of white supremacy and also a really annoying sentiment to hear for people who have had their cultures suppressed in favor of forced assimilation to american culture. at which point i thought "oh fuck, they're right, that's shitty of me.

so i did some reflecting, and i've come to identify two major factors that contribute to my feeling of Having No Culture (which still persists despite consciously realizing that it's not true):

1. lack of community
2. lack of rituals (that i find personally meaningful)