I Feel The Energy of Places
Ley lines. Ley lines. Ley lines.
Those are the words running through my head the summer I started sleeping diagonal: corner to corner, occupying the maximum amount of space.
Something happens to you after sleeping on couches. Something happens to you after sleeping on slim air mattresses in slim rooms. Something happens to you when your home is entirely something you are and own and are never separate from.
Ley lines.
That summer I slept on the gravel under a tarp. That summer I slept in the forest. That summer I slept in an abandoned tent and woke up every hour throughout the night listening for someone returning home, listening for night raids by the RCMP, listening.
Listening and wondering if today was the day when the world would start to make sense again. If today was the day that rationality would prevail. If today was the day that people could stop endangering their lives and putting their bodies in harm’s way in order to save the trees.
Because it makes no economic or ethical sense to cut down old growth forests. None. Even the government’s own reports say this. Because all signs point to PROTECT OLD GROWTH FORESTS. All signs point to WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MADNESS.
Yet here we are, Indigenous youth. Yet here we are, “independent media.” Here we are, artists and baristas, engineers and lawyers and accountants, mothers and fathers, students and teachers, every slice of life standing in the way of men making profits off an ancient ecosystem, a living system, mycelium, lichen, moss, owls and birds and squirrels and bears and trees … thousand-year-old trees.
Yet here we are.
Ley lines.
I remember the first time I came home from Fairy Creek. Two short nights and three long days. I was devastated. I didn’t know where to turn. I didn’t know how to hold myself. How to be. All I wanted to do was to talk to somebody who understood. Somebody who wasn’t going along with the “normal” world. Somebody who wasn’t calm. Somebody who could hold me in my pain.
So, I tried to talk to you. To you, my friend—you who’d promised me that you’d hold me in this journey of direct action. You who promised me that I wasn’t alone.
I tried to tell you the whole story—how scared I was talking to the police, how much I cried, how I hid in the woods while 14-and-15-year-olds dug themselves into holes and locked themselves in. I tried to tell you all of this over the phone, but you cut me off. You cut me off because you were picking up her.
Her, whose name I can’t remember. Her, who you’d sucked up all the air at the beginning of the conversation telling me about how the relationship was no longer working. Her, who you didn’t trust. Wait. That last part wasn’t you.
None of these stories are true.
I felt so used — so fetishized, fantasized — cut off at the climax, the turn between the second act and the third. Made to be the manic pixie mono myth: the dream, the illusion; a reflection so bright that it shines context over your entire life. Coward.
Cowards. The lot of them. Ley lines.
CTV News report. March 9th, 2023: RCMP watchdog investigates handling of environmental protests
You already know that the inability to be with our grief is at the roots of apathy. Again and again and again, they tell me, “Capitalism! The Economy!”
“The patriarchy,” I say.
“Natural resources,” they respond.
“Rape of Earth,” I exclaim. “Can’t you see? It’s obvious.”
Don’t look me in the eye and tell me that this isn’t about the weakness of men.
But that’s not fucking fair, is it? Blanket statements. Judgement. Shame. Blame. We are better than this. We know better than this. This is all unfolding for your growth. We are consciousness becoming self-conscious. We are living through the collapse of polarities, moving through the head of the ouroboros. There was only ever one way this was all going to play out.
Okay then. Ley lines.
At what level, at what level, at what level do we achieve accountability? Where do we caste our stones? Pardon me, “cast.” Tell me about the history of castes and whether or not we are here to self-actualize.
Mind whore. Vulnerability slut. Ley lines.
Orienting towards their safety, the lot of them. Orienting towards their comfort. So comfortable they can’t hear your cries. Or, rather, they hear your cries but don’t do anything about them. All they do is lean further into their comfort.
Your complacency is killing me. Your complacency killing us. Your comfort, how you settle, the stories you call love. That which you fight for.
“Love is the answer!”
Love is the answer? You don’t know what that means.
Ley lines.
You don’t know what love is. You haven’t unpacked it. You haven’t earned it. Because you didn’t have to. No one forced your hand. You could settle. You did settle. That is not love. You are complacent. You are compliment.
Tell the truth. Save the world.
The subconscious speaks in symbols. What is informing — guiding and shaping me — that I can’t even see? What answers from earth and the trees lay in the ground beneath my feet?
I lay myself out on the rug, fibres scratching my face, knees framing my chest and I feel it come through, the energy of places. That which I am never separate from. Ley lines.
“Healing is not the closing of the cut, it is the grieving with the knife.”
May 5, 2016. Bayo Akomolafe: “Meeting the Inappropriate/d - The Liminality of Justice and Reconciliation in Canada”
I didn’t want to release this piece. I wanted to make it less “harsh.” Less vulnerable. But it is meant to be what it is meant to be. For now. Where Art meets Reality.
The World Is Built Out of Stories.
Ohh Kelly, my heart is aching after reading this. Please know if you ever need to talk about FC, I'm here for you. <3
🫂❤️