This image is from an August evening nine years ago, but our sunset skies look similar now, albeit for very different reasons. Then, it was the remnant clouds of a monsoonal storm, passed through only moment before, that set the sky afire.
Now, it’s less fog than smog, no natural clouds filled with water but the hazy particulate matter of ash and smoke that turn the twilight heavens to flame.
Sleep is hard to find now: deadly drought and an entire west on fire; a pandemic that, thanks to colonial malfeasance, targets our own disproportionately; a government overrun with literal Nazis. Add to that the unseasonal high heat and the shifting winds of night and the smoke of nearby fires invading windows left barely cracked, and insomnia is a given this day. The forecasts suggests some chance of rain, but we know better than to bank on that anymore.
In this place, too, this is a sacred season, one in which the people who belong to this land shut out the outside world and dedicate themselves to ceremony. Even drought and pandemic hold no sway over such matters; these are ways so timeless and well-thought-out as to be virtually immune. But they remind us, too, of all that has been lost to us this year, and will continue to be lost for the foreseeable future. Ceremony can recenter us in the hard times, but celebration is harder come by now.
And yet, we know the necessity of it. We know the role of the drum, of the song, of the steps of the dance, of the food and the feasting and the prayer that accompanies it all. The powwow circuit may be silent this year, feast days no longer communal, but the spirits that animate them still survive. We need to engage with them now more than ever.
And so these dangerous days become a time for prayer; a time to dance in time with the earth’s heartbeat; a time for a song for a world on fire. Flames are cleansing; warming and illuminating, too. Unchecked, they can be deadly, but even as we seek to balance them with rain, we cannot forget their intrinsic and elemental value as we seek to restore their presence to harmony. We emerge from the waters of birth, but we are born of fire, too. Both build and strengthen and temper our spirits, giving us courage, making us strong.
And now, the sky reminds us: The song is necessary, the offerings and thanksgiving too, for the gifts we are granted, whether in the fire or after the rain.
~ Aji
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