From The Ash­es of ARIA

The day started. Getting into our bodies. Tautum and I, under the main overhang, were joined by two hornets, each mirroring us as we stretched and did yoga. Mine, I'm afraid to say, was not so flexible, not so vital, but it managed to reincarnate by the end of our session. We had a very intense and inspiring morning ritual led by Sagery—creating language within our bodies, between our bodies; becoming a mycelial network of vibration and contact.

Tautum and I had a lot to discuss today, the shape of our worlding session took form. We began with some blessings, some singing, some observation of the natural environment translated into personal rhythms. We considered Butoh as a form of metamorphosis. But upon being advised by the Stewards, the path took a different turn. We began collecting rotten apples with the prospect of filling them with candles. But in the end, the apple became the object of focus, a sort of stigmata, a way to enter another’s body; with heat over the fire; to consume one, to become apple, to cannibalize. “We are the organs of this world, flesh of its flesh, the world is perceiving itself through us.” Flip surprised us with a visitation in another form, possessed. We learned some physical tools for dealing with catastrophe. We passed a marble through our bodies, through space. We moved sensation and awareness throughout every fiber of our being.

Tautum and I managed to carve our two symbols into the rubber blocks and print them on our T-shirts while reading from Unsorcery and from The Spell of the Sensuous, gathering further inspiration and text for our worlding session. After dinner, the Walkers guided us along their worlding session. After drinking some tea and being guided imaginatively to meet a silvery spirit entity in the sea, we were brought outside around a large clay sigil where we took some long, deep breaths and blew flour on different body parts of our neighbors’ bodies. We formed a flock of swallows; however, we did not move so gracefully as the swallows—we still need to learn to fly properly. After the failed attempt to organize a bonfire, we returned in our swallow flock formation to observe the beautiful, bright, clear moon in the night sky, gazing for the shooting stars. Thus began and ended the time spiral fragments of this day.

I neglected, maybe, to mention that I’m a Phoenix Keeper, and my name is Flynn Ascherr. During our Stewardly guidance, Nuk stepped into her new role, replacing Flip, and excelled beyond expectations, guiding us through an apple tasting, biting, licking, inspirational sharing session. Also, after the closing of the Walkers’ worlding session, we concluded the night with a pact to all dream of the same apple tree, and one another around it. We composed a chant that we sang, and we circumambulated the tree to get it in its full clarity and diversity; then we took a good long look at each other’s faces to remember to meet in the dream world.

Flynn Ascherr, Phoenix Keepers, day two of the ARIA continuum. Slept well, much better than the night before. The moon was high and bright. The previous day, I woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night—I think I was still coming into my body, feverishly rearranging my molecules. This morning the world seemed nascent. I woke up early, as I always do, before just about anybody else. Only the sounds of the rooster, barking dogs in the distance. I couldn’t see the mountain across—it was completely covered in fog. The world had yet to be rendered, and the sun was still low on the horizon behind the trees, invisible. Even as it rose, the distance, the world outside only appeared to materialize very, very gradually. It’s nice to enter the day in this soft way. Looking forward to our worlding ritual this evening, and seeing what kind of transformation it can bring within the group; to connect, reconnect their bodies, their minds, with our environment, and to inspire some sort of aim to live in an equilibrium.

This morning, our opening ritual was once again about language in the body, but using another body as a tool, communicating through that other body, then that body communicating through you, and then together communicating in unison, synchronicity. It was another beautiful opening exercise. The day continued with language, but with the devolution of language. We were visited by a presence from the future inhabiting the body of one of our group mates. They’ve led us on a journey to lose our language, in a process of whittling away; picking the 50 essential words, creating a new world just with those words, taking that world from the person beside us, mixing it with two other worlds, and then translating that through Mid-journey into images of that world.

Also, Tautum and I are making progress. Our worlding session is today, and I feel a little bit of pressure, but we walked through everything, and have quite a good idea of the dramaturgy, the duration; we worked out the small technical considerations together with the assistance of Corey. Still need to prepare the bonfire, which last night didn’t happen for the Walkers ritual, but tonight is essential for ours, so I’m trusting that it will manifest for us. We won’t have so much time to finish preparing our guided meditation parts, but I’m sure we’re going to manage. Our mantra is clear, and we are almost absolutely in sync. It’s a rare and very [pause] contentful kind of harmony to find.

I was touched this morning during the opening circle, when Tautum had a dream—not a good dream, but a dream—that signaled to them about not letting me be alone, about our togetherness. And um, every day it feels more and more true.

I’m still processing the end of our worlding session. Tautum and I spent the whole day preparing, walking through all of the details, coordinating all of our assistants, our new honorary Phoenixes. By all accounts it was a success. The feedback was all quite positive, which was a relief to hear. From the inside some moments felt a bit excruciating, but from the outside, the tension was palpable and effective. The dramaturgy, the rhythm, it all worked as it needed to. The last-minute addition of soundtrack from Fis and Rob Thorne to the guided death and rebirth meditation really clicked with the text and added another dimension to the whole experience. Couldn’t be more grateful to Bellamy for tending the fire, keeping it going, even though we started it a bit too soon, and the procession of apple bearers took much longer than we anticipated. But the chanting [pause] at times was funny, at times it reached its altered zone—so the duration was not too long, I believe. I’m both relieved and proud, and lucky to have been able to be a Phoenix Keeper together with Tautum—we really clicked these days. And I’m looking forward to a day without the pressure of the worlding session, when we can just walk carefree, think and feel other things than apple … tree.

We woke up early, as we usually do. Tautum shared a nice moment of their dream with me. It was a beautiful flying dream which they thought was gifted to them by the wasp which stung them yesterday. Couldn’t remember my dreams any of these past days, but I did have a song in my head this morning by Carly Simon and I think I finally understood it. “I bet you think this song is about you, don't you?” She was really speaking to herself.

In the mornings I particularly enjoy our movement/body exercises. When Tautum and I do stretching, yoga, they seem to be more feline, slipping between jaguar and human. I wonder if today they might remain more jaguar after last night’s worlding session. I hope I’m able to coexist and communicate with the jaguar too. Maybe the worlding session has enabled that in me. It’s been quite inspiring to put all of our research into practice, to embody the Cannibal Metaphysics of Viveiros de Castro’s descriptions—shifting perspective, becoming animal—as well as activating the words of David Abram from “Spell of the Sensuous”, and our becoming apple—and all of the thought gymnastics that Alina Popa does in their “Unsorcery” essays. It’s been a rare opportunity to perform askesis, and I really need to find some way to integrate that into every day; to truly engage with the works that I research on my daily basis; bring them into the world.

We had quite the intense circle this morning. Winnie was alarmed, when during our Phoenix Keepers archival photo shoot we had broken the morning silence, she came to let us know about disturbing the others and noticed a note in June’s pocket with names on it, but that the names were going to be taken away by sunrise, or were they nouns or …? And then there was a general confusion because June wasn’t aware of this note, but then remembered it later, and then had it in the pocket, but the origin was unclear. And also during the sharing circle, Ezra spoke of his dream where he met a fan of his out in the valley here who asked for an autograph. And then he forgot his name, he forgot how to write, and the fan remembered his name, but then couldn’t write. And they both just started laughing. Maybe something was started yesterday during our visitation with this entity from the future that’s basically instructed us how to remove our language? And maybe they’re the thief? There were also some beautiful moments. Bellamy shared that last night after the worlding session, the thing they thought just before bed was, if the house was burning down and they could only keep one thing, they would keep the fire.

Before this circle, we had a really beautiful morning ritual as always, with Sagery, this time ending up in a circular formation on the floor with our hands on each other’s bellies, gradually intoning notes, different intensities, different pitches, in a sort of improvised score. I could feel the vibrations traveling through all of us—it was really unifying. Before we started the exercise, I didn’t see where everyone was sitting, just Bellamy on one side of me, and I believe it was Tay on the other. We had our hands on each other’s bellies; I could also feel their fingers on the other side—Bellamy’s or Tay’s, I didn’t know whose fingers those were. But later, while brushing the fingers on my left, I felt I knew that touch, even though I can’t say I’d experienced it much before, but I knew it was Tautum somehow, and later on after the ritual, my suspicion was confirmed—but I think suspicion is the wrong word, my intuition, rather—and it moved me to know that our connection has become so strong. That a really superficial caress can transfer so much information, so much embodied knowing and identification.

I must say, I’m quite satisfied with how our time capsule turned out. June came to document the installation we made with it, before we put it all in the capsule. We halved all of the apples and harvested the seeds. They made quite a beautiful picture. In the center was a board with melted candles from the ceremony and a card that I mysteriously found sitting in our sleeping quarters, playing cards from a deck I’ve never seen before. It was 10x and I just picked it up to collect our (strangely) pair of wasps who died in the window sill—everything seems to happen to us in twos. It just provided this perfect backdrop since (also strangely) the card had 20 little spaces with a kind of shrubbery around them—corresponding to the amount of seeds of our participants. We put it in the center on the board with melted candles and the apple halves above and below, aligned. And Tautum described our mantra, which people seem to have trouble forgetting, but for me now it’s getting a bit hazy—thankfully, it’s captured in the photographs from June … something about: we are the flesh of this world, or that’s kind of the gist of it. But I hope I can remember it for tomorrow, for the burial of the capsule because we intend to give everyone a seed and recite the mantra. When we started packing everything into the capsule, the 20 apples fit perfectly—couldn’t fit a single apple more. We added some ashes from the fire, some seeds, and the two wasps of course.

I was a bit surprised to hear from Winnie that she found Tautum to be aggressive, but I guess everyone has their own dynamics. We got into some quite deep conversations, first me and Tautum, and then with Winnie and Sagery while planning our capsule; contemplating the anthropomorphization of death, and how death for a tree doesn’t necessarily mean or feel the same as death for a human would; that trees can continue on, living in the branches that are planted, or becoming homes for other animals in the forest, or just having a completely different ontology of life and of death. We got deep into the nature of consciousness, the material basis of things, the oneness of consciousness—we really zoomed out.

Feeling kind of bittersweet, knowing that the end is just around the corner. It’s really been a beautiful, enlightening few days. I think it’s been a few days … I’m not really sure because I’ve lost track of time, but it seems like people here are existing in different time spirals anyways, so we’re all just converging for this moment, however long it feels to each of us, I hope it’s possible that we can converge again, at least most of us … but there’s no way of knowing.

The afternoon we spent with a visitor from the future, an ethnographer, Dr Živa. She made us all ethnographers and we had to experience some presentations from a tree healer and a forester from a perspective other than our own. Of course Tautum and I both independently opted to be apples. There were quite some funny and nice other perspectives from the iguana, the school play tree, the scenographer, and others. We experienced trees from some other perspectives which was nice after everything we did last night in our worlding session—but I don’t feel like saying too much more about it. I’m excited for the Exo Protos’ worlding session tonight, and I don’t want the night to end, really.

I’m sitting now in the early morning, and what may be for the final time in our tree house/nest, which we only just constructed and inhabited. Last night was a bit of tumult, but at least I’m grateful that my fellow Phoenix Keeper and I were able to find ourselves new names. Theirs came to me quite quickly as we carried the ashes of our worlding session handed to us by an unnamed name thief who instructed us to take the easy path back to our headquarters since we chose not to renounce our names forever and never have a new name again. The whole circumstance was quite unexpected, I mean, and it wasn’t just us, it was everyone, even the other Exo Protos who were hosting their worlding session, who seemed to be taken totally by surprise. The entity formerly known as Bellamy seemed to be possessed by a spirit from the past which came to take names—to do what with, we’re not sure. We don’t know if they can use all the names themselves or they just keep them locked away. I’m curious to see how this morning circle will be for those who chose to take the nameless path. But the worlding session from the Exo Protos is, in fact, what gave us our names, literally and figuratively. I decided to now be called Clay after we had fashioned their three-eared rabbits and three-winged wasps and other fanciful mutants out of the natural clay they brought for us during their worlding session. And of course, this was probably obvious—my partner in Phoenix keeping will now be known as Ash.

Finding it harder to formulate emotions into words this morning. I don’t know what the future holds. The end is always a bit scary and also a bit exciting, but it also means we’re able to rest, I suppose. And to stop struggling for a little bit—struggling for some collective vision. I hope we can carry these tools and experiences all with us to the next worlds we pass on to. Death is just a transformation after all … and all worlds end sometime. There is a stillness within me, which is quite precious, and aligning, and I wonder if this is how the Phoenix feels … just before it finishes immolating … in anticipation of a new generation. [Click]