A blow to the core. These next weeks will be very quiet. Death and resurrection. Long-expected but are we ever prepared? Is it right that this should happen? What on earth are we supposed to do now?
From another, on end days and beginning ones:
...
28. Renew your vows to memory, your lover, your betrothed, your faithful and straying spouse. Remember the last year, and call to mind the blessed dead and your own death. Revere the dead on this day.
29. Awaken, think, go about the day. Begin the fast after noon: juice of all kinds is fine, but you wouldn't want to eat beforehand. It'll mess things up. Remember what it's like to know you're going to die; remember what it's like to know you will never be the same.
The night is the feast of the fast. Drink pleasure and pain, love and hatred, rage and calmness from the same cup. Eat from the basket of sensation, because this is the night of the whole world. Drink lots and lots of water. Move around, and prepare for dawn: be beside yourself. Weep. Stoke life's fire within you until you vomit it out; spit ashes and be burnt up, wholly, by life. Keep this, a celebratory vigil, sacred, by taking all into it. Stay awake until dawn. The sun's light is the light of life shed on the world.
30. Before this dawn, shear yourself. Remember this dawn when you do this.
Dawn. Remember your death by words: remember the moments at which you were burnt up from the inside by life, and speak them. Incise your tongue three times. Remember your death by motion: remember in your body the moments at which you were burnt up from the inside by life, and enact them. Mark your wounds; make your wounded body visible. Remember the death of your mind: remember the moments your memory, your knowing, and your acting all ceased. Bind yourself with a white cloth by each arm.
Go, shorn and silenced, wounded and bound, a destroyer who has destroyed herself-himself in the full light of the day, and take yourself into water. This is your death: you are not what you were. You have never been what you were, and though you die, you are.
Leave the water and remember that this life comes from the one before and the next comes from this one. Water washes against, with, and through life; life and water are closer to one another than life ever knew. When you are washed away, are you washed away or are you water? You are neither one of these: you were not and you are.
Fast this day and remember your death. Wear bonds of white cloth, one on each arm, and remember. Stay silent and remember. Mark your wounds and remember. Sleep bound, and drink only water.
31. Leave sleep and remember your death. Keep bonds of white cloth around each arm until the evening. Speak today to as many of those whom you love as you can manage. Be with your people today: they sustain your body. Walk and see your place as much as possible. You will be weak and hungry by noon, when you break your fast. Remove your bonds and know your wounds and your mind's death and your silence, and remember these when first you eat. Feast on the evening meal.
1. Rest well this day, and remember how your mind was restored to wakefulness; remember your marriage to memory; remember the cold water, light and air of dawn, and the fire of life.
2. Sleep in the daytime: this is your broken body, knit together. Remember, when you awaken, your wounds. Sleep, and remember so deeply that you are at once memory and being.
3. Remember the whole of you. You were bound together on this day. After dusk, remember everything your body has been, an alien and a self, an implement and an end; and stay awake all the night, remembering how you came to be whole.
4. Rest well, and speak the story of your won words, of how you came to speak, the first moments you knew words and the ones at which you lost them. Remember your voicelessness and the restoration of your voice. This is the deepest day of remembrance, the day on which you reveal yourself to yourself, and you will not understand.
5. Be with your people, and speak with them, and go to a place with water.
6. This day - the seventh day - you are alive. Arise before dawn and give thanks. Remember the dead aloud, and the living also, and remember them together who are a communion.
Testify and remember.
From another, on end days and beginning ones:
...
28. Renew your vows to memory, your lover, your betrothed, your faithful and straying spouse. Remember the last year, and call to mind the blessed dead and your own death. Revere the dead on this day.
29. Awaken, think, go about the day. Begin the fast after noon: juice of all kinds is fine, but you wouldn't want to eat beforehand. It'll mess things up. Remember what it's like to know you're going to die; remember what it's like to know you will never be the same.
The night is the feast of the fast. Drink pleasure and pain, love and hatred, rage and calmness from the same cup. Eat from the basket of sensation, because this is the night of the whole world. Drink lots and lots of water. Move around, and prepare for dawn: be beside yourself. Weep. Stoke life's fire within you until you vomit it out; spit ashes and be burnt up, wholly, by life. Keep this, a celebratory vigil, sacred, by taking all into it. Stay awake until dawn. The sun's light is the light of life shed on the world.
30. Before this dawn, shear yourself. Remember this dawn when you do this.
Dawn. Remember your death by words: remember the moments at which you were burnt up from the inside by life, and speak them. Incise your tongue three times. Remember your death by motion: remember in your body the moments at which you were burnt up from the inside by life, and enact them. Mark your wounds; make your wounded body visible. Remember the death of your mind: remember the moments your memory, your knowing, and your acting all ceased. Bind yourself with a white cloth by each arm.
Go, shorn and silenced, wounded and bound, a destroyer who has destroyed herself-himself in the full light of the day, and take yourself into water. This is your death: you are not what you were. You have never been what you were, and though you die, you are.
Leave the water and remember that this life comes from the one before and the next comes from this one. Water washes against, with, and through life; life and water are closer to one another than life ever knew. When you are washed away, are you washed away or are you water? You are neither one of these: you were not and you are.
Fast this day and remember your death. Wear bonds of white cloth, one on each arm, and remember. Stay silent and remember. Mark your wounds and remember. Sleep bound, and drink only water.
31. Leave sleep and remember your death. Keep bonds of white cloth around each arm until the evening. Speak today to as many of those whom you love as you can manage. Be with your people today: they sustain your body. Walk and see your place as much as possible. You will be weak and hungry by noon, when you break your fast. Remove your bonds and know your wounds and your mind's death and your silence, and remember these when first you eat. Feast on the evening meal.
1. Rest well this day, and remember how your mind was restored to wakefulness; remember your marriage to memory; remember the cold water, light and air of dawn, and the fire of life.
2. Sleep in the daytime: this is your broken body, knit together. Remember, when you awaken, your wounds. Sleep, and remember so deeply that you are at once memory and being.
3. Remember the whole of you. You were bound together on this day. After dusk, remember everything your body has been, an alien and a self, an implement and an end; and stay awake all the night, remembering how you came to be whole.
4. Rest well, and speak the story of your won words, of how you came to speak, the first moments you knew words and the ones at which you lost them. Remember your voicelessness and the restoration of your voice. This is the deepest day of remembrance, the day on which you reveal yourself to yourself, and you will not understand.
5. Be with your people, and speak with them, and go to a place with water.
6. This day - the seventh day - you are alive. Arise before dawn and give thanks. Remember the dead aloud, and the living also, and remember them together who are a communion.
Testify and remember.
