So the story I wanted to tell today was of the ceremony many of us were part of on Saturday around Grace Iset. The walk out to Grace was conceived on Briony’s wide summertime porch just Thursday as a bunch of us talked about what we could do in the short but urgent timeframe we have to deal with the disgracing of Grace Island. We conceived of a walk…. and looking at the tide tables, saw that a land bridge would open Saturday, the lowest tide of the year …. full moon pulling hard …. later, at home, I pulled out my bag of un-strung ‘prayer flags’, really just squares of cloth, cut up into rectangles, in every colour of the rainbow, thrift-store foraged from the linen chests of island grandmothers. Everyday prayerful bits of cloth which had been found and then neatly stored for years in my cupboard, remnants from an action from years and years ago in which I envisioned people would write on flags with magic marker, an event called Peace is a Work of Art, which didn’t really go off .. only 15 or so people wrote messages on the flags so I never strung them up but rather put them back in this bag, and put the bag back in the basement, to be unearthed this spring during a clean-up. So its Saturday: Sandra Leckie and I go to Mouat’s and choose 500 meters of cotton twine, then sit tying prayer flags at four foot intervals onto this enormous rope by the bandshell in the park. The rope is laid out on the grass in a randomized labyrinth; then Joe Akerman begins to pound his drum, instructing us all to take up the rope at the points at which flags are tied on. Somehow people have come ... kids, moms, dads, believers: no-one knows why. Were just here. 100 of us assemble on the grass in Centennial Park and pick up our ‘spots’ along the wire. My flag is green. As we begin to walk, we ‘untangle’ the labyrinth of string. The unfurling is unplanned, unchoreographed, but perfectly graceful. Because the rope is bent backwards on itself many times over, as we walk we pass one another, and meet each others eyes, suddenly aware that we are in a genuine, profound ceremony, together. Teachers, friends, remote acquaintances, strangers: we are all in this together, literally connected by this rope of prayers. Joe leads us through town and we head along the boardwalk to Grace Point. I glance again at my green flag and notice that it has been written on. Stringing the flags I had thought that I’d read all of the messages (sweet and sentimental ones, plain ones, articulate ones, ones which were trite… there were only about 15 flags of the many hundreds we strung that had been written on). But no: the message was new to me. My green flag has a fresh message for me, which reads: “I think people in Africa just need love.” Then, written below, “Peace, Love and Understanding.” Then, signed, in the bottom left hand corner: Kina. Kina. That was my daughter. What are the chances that I should come to hold this flag? In the anarchy of ceremony there was no reason though I feel inside of me the chime of a most cackling rhyme. And I’m gutted and delirious with emotion, even more profoundly connected to this Grace islet action, feeling that I am accompanied by my child whom I love so much, unflaggingly, if you’ll excuse the pun, through the whole loss of her as a daughter and gaining of him as a son, through the whole transgender odyssey that has been our past couple of years. I am in a long line of people. We have come together to oppose the building of a house atop graves of First Nations, come to Grace point to draw a line in the sand. It is a bit treacherous to get over the crest of the hill before descending down onto the shellfish bed that will be our collective bridge. We are helped by loving schoolteachers and ‘marshals’ who have sensitively stepped out of the procession to lend a hand to the rest of us. Indeed, as we crest the rise of land and Grace Islet appears in front of us, a land bridge that has opened up, nearly biblically, allowing what is usually ocean to carry us as dry land. Joe is already across, near the far shore, climbing up to the high tide mark of the island to tie the flags to the roots of a tree that is rooted upon Grace Islet. On the Salt Spring side Ann and John tie the other end of the string into the Gary Oak tree on the shore, so the flags, all 500 meters of them, all snippets of grannys tablecloths, rise in a glorious rainbow smile above our heads. I wanted to take a photo of Kinas flag but before I can, it is pulled out of my hands and lifted by my friends, neighbours, and not-yet-got-to-know-ye peeps up into the air. The flag is tangled up beyond my reach, and nobody will ever read Kinas message again. It will be carried off by the rising tide and Kina will be no more... all hail Rex, kingly teacher of letting go. I stay on the land bridge for as long as it endures against the rising tide, which is another half hour. I watch the waters rise and close the gap, standing with Janisse, the sweet lovely mother and my best friend from when our children were also best friends, from the age of 2 until around 10; my ‘other mother’ and sister. She knew Kina, and she knows and supports and loves Rex….. That flag was not a souvenir or a marker, it was a key. A portal to this story. As Betsy Warland says, We are given our narrative material. it seeks us out. We must elbow our way through our resistances and avoidances until we accept our narrative. These moments that are infinity eating its own tail leave me breathless with understanding and send me back into the workaday world with crystal clear instructions. xoxoxoxo
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 02:48:36 +0000
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