Where the Book Falls Open

I created a performance from the following journal entries:

June 27, 2006 - moon in Cancer

The morning is fresh with mimosa fragrance, lingering dew and rising sunshine.
Breathing mimosa deep into my third eye, it is easy for me to understand
how folks come to love the south.
Fragrance roots us to a place, transports us across time,
carries us to our psychic home on a single inhale.

Barbara Kingsolver writes,
“What you hold in your hands right now, beneath these words,
is consecrated air and time and sunlight and, first of all, a place. …
Whether we understand where we are or don’t, that is the story.
To be here or not to be… We sing the song of our home.”
(Small Wonder 40)

I’ve been living in Southern Illinois for nine years.
On one hand, it feels like –well, i was going to write ‘home’ but I paused, thinking,
do i dare write ‘home’? does it really feel like home? what does home mean to me?

Chandra Mohanty’s questions resonate with me when she asks,
“What is home? The place I was born? Where I grew up? Where my parents live?
Where I locate my community, my people? Who are ‘my people’?
Is home a geographical space, a historical space, an emotional, sensory space?…”
(Feminism Without Borders 126)

What does ‘home’ feel like to me?
Early home feels like cool air through windows and
blue carpet from my childhood, bacon frying.
Present home feels like heat and flowers,
sex and sweat and cricketsong and fireflies.
Present home feels like Southern Illinois.

But I have to be careful, because Southern Illinois
can also feel soggy, stagnant, a holding bowl of old energy;
whereas the ocean energy is charged, fresh, moving.
Although I’ve never lived there,
home feels like the ocean, fluid motion. Possibilities.

I’m looking for home.

I wonder what I’ll find when I stop looking.
I wonder what I’m missing by searching.
Is the journey in the stillness?

June 28, 2006 - moon in Leo

The first tigerlily bloomed today.
This discovery is always a special moment.

July 27, 2006 - moon in Virgo

My birthday. Today I arrive at the east coast.
It’s my birthday! and I’ve arrived
to the place where sun gives birth to day,
an island in coastal Maine,
ocean shores I’ve never been.
It’s my birthday and I’ve arrived.

July 28, 2006 - moon in Virgo

I found my coastline. My favorite so far. Its name is Wonderland.
To find Wonderland, I walked through enchanted red spruce forest
and emerged upon acres of granite coastline.
I could see no other human soul.
I slipped into the icy silk of sea, and my chakras burst open, singing.
The chill of the north atlantic settled at the base of my neck and
radiated through my body like fire, fierce fire-ice.
My happiness was pure as mist-hovered hemlocks,
clear as cliffs against sky and solid as granite.
I back-stroked the waves, breast-stroked the tide,
dove underwater and felt gloriously enveloped.
The happiness in my heart was new, and I knew
it must be joy and centeredness and clarity… yes clarity:
I knew I was alive,
dolphin spirited and porpoisely playful,
united with my child-self. I was me.
I played until my lips and finger-tips went stiff with cold,
then crawled from the icy water and
sprawled like a lizard to thaw my body on the sun-warmed granite flats.

August 2, 2006 - Lammas waxing half-moon in Scorpio

There’s a lonely mysticism here. A rugged mystique.
Piercing extremes jolt my skin my heart my muscles my bones —
forcing me to stay completely in my body amidst the magic.
Whether I’m tightroping slick seaweed-covered jagged rocks
or grabbing granite handholds while scaling ocean cliffs,
Whether I’m billygoating down a mountainside, or diving into icy tide,
Acadia helps me to recognize the extremist in me.
Right now, I’m sitting on a boulder damp with sea spray
surrounded by acres of ochre seaweed cascading like glorious hair
over thousands of rounding rock heads.
A gull appears like an apparition through a seamless veil of silver mist.
A sailboat breaks the smooth horizon.
Everything is calm; nothing is idle.
I wish I could capture the energy of place with words.
Embodied experience is its own kind of poetry.
I store the particularities of the moment in my shoulders, my belly, behind my eyes.
I will smell this ocean in my dreams.
This body will remember this place for lifetimes.
I kiss the face cliff and the mist
of moist air is the mysticism of my tears, the
tangible mystery of my story, my ecstasy embodied.

August 3, 2006 - moon in Scorpio

Today I leave Seawall. I leave Acadia.

Saying goodbye to a coastline is like saying goodbye to a lover, or a dear dear friend.
All my heart wishes and hopes we’ll meet again.
Our relationship has created homeplace.
I promise I will return.

As I write ‘return,’ two bald eagles land in the spruces and cause a ruckus.
They too have promised a return and have made good on it.

--Diana Tigerlily