Thank you for this potent articulation Sophie. The nature of memory feels relevant given the tomb/womb moment we are in as a species and begs the question, if we do survive beyond the next 50-100 years, will it be because we came out as something "new" or that we remembered something. Some say that we as human beings lost our original instructions, and yet, in the story of the caterpillar, there was an instruction of the butterfly latently held in it's cells, activated through a form of self-destruction. And the memory of the "safe plant to lay eggs on," is that a continuance of the caterpillar through the cocoon into the butterfly, or is it an ancestral memory of butterflies past? Have you ever seen an ancestral bear trail - where bears over many life-times walk the same path in the forest, indenting the ground with generations of the gravity of berry fat and fish, scientists unsure why they do this.. perhaps it is so that they can remember, perhaps these ancestral bear trails are a form of ancestral memory charging station, so that the bears can keep on being beary themselves with all the wisdom that came before.
In 2019, I went on Ancestral Pilgrimage to Eastern Europe to bear witness to the historic genocide of one of my ancestral lines. This trip was prompted through a realizing that my personal troubles held roots, held memory, in a time and place far beyond my own. When there, one day, walking along railroad tracks, memories flashed in my being of death marches to trains, or forced exile and ruin. Was I imagining this? No, I don't believe so. I was digesting this, like the caterpillar, slowly recking myself. For those of us who trouble finds (and does it not find us all in our own way?), could perhaps this trouble be some greater digestion process happening through in service to a latent reality, contoured through other memory that we can't yet perceive? I don't want to glorify pain, illness, trauma and I certainly would not suggest this to many in the world in far more harrowing situations than my own - and yet this consideration re-emerges for myself on this page, spurred by the considerations laid forth in your essay. It draws me back to the title for this substack Sophie, which I read more as a prayer "Make Me Good Soil," and I wonder now, if it is soil you are becoming, or truly wishing for? What if whatever lays beyond this current chrysalis is, by nature's design, unknown until one is there? Does the Caterpillar know it's becoming a butterfly? And I suppose, as you iterate in your essay, "It's only initiation if you survive.." and here lays a bifurcation point.. if it's a tomb that is cast, soil one becomes (which isn't such a bad thing!), however, if it is a womb, or a chrysalis, then perhaps, wings are what shall grow.
Thank you for this potent articulation Sophie. The nature of memory feels relevant given the tomb/womb moment we are in as a species and begs the question, if we do survive beyond the next 50-100 years, will it be because we came out as something "new" or that we remembered something. Some say that we as human beings lost our original instructions, and yet, in the story of the caterpillar, there was an instruction of the butterfly latently held in it's cells, activated through a form of self-destruction. And the memory of the "safe plant to lay eggs on," is that a continuance of the caterpillar through the cocoon into the butterfly, or is it an ancestral memory of butterflies past? Have you ever seen an ancestral bear trail - where bears over many life-times walk the same path in the forest, indenting the ground with generations of the gravity of berry fat and fish, scientists unsure why they do this.. perhaps it is so that they can remember, perhaps these ancestral bear trails are a form of ancestral memory charging station, so that the bears can keep on being beary themselves with all the wisdom that came before.
In 2019, I went on Ancestral Pilgrimage to Eastern Europe to bear witness to the historic genocide of one of my ancestral lines. This trip was prompted through a realizing that my personal troubles held roots, held memory, in a time and place far beyond my own. When there, one day, walking along railroad tracks, memories flashed in my being of death marches to trains, or forced exile and ruin. Was I imagining this? No, I don't believe so. I was digesting this, like the caterpillar, slowly recking myself. For those of us who trouble finds (and does it not find us all in our own way?), could perhaps this trouble be some greater digestion process happening through in service to a latent reality, contoured through other memory that we can't yet perceive? I don't want to glorify pain, illness, trauma and I certainly would not suggest this to many in the world in far more harrowing situations than my own - and yet this consideration re-emerges for myself on this page, spurred by the considerations laid forth in your essay. It draws me back to the title for this substack Sophie, which I read more as a prayer "Make Me Good Soil," and I wonder now, if it is soil you are becoming, or truly wishing for? What if whatever lays beyond this current chrysalis is, by nature's design, unknown until one is there? Does the Caterpillar know it's becoming a butterfly? And I suppose, as you iterate in your essay, "It's only initiation if you survive.." and here lays a bifurcation point.. if it's a tomb that is cast, soil one becomes (which isn't such a bad thing!), however, if it is a womb, or a chrysalis, then perhaps, wings are what shall grow.
thank you for this, sophie~ 🙏🏻 🐛
stunning as always.
Thank you. This pulled out some pain 🦋 and confirmed /made some sense of a recent lucid dream. Bless you