HOW TO FALL

Photos by RAFFAELLA © 2022

Over several months and sessions, I fell in the Oregon desert, recovering paths, making new shapes, and creating a conversation between my ancient ancestors and my hosts, the ancient guides of Paiute country. We spoke of what it means to weave lineages healthfully at sites of place (body-as-place, land-as-place), respecting variegation, sites of differentiated and overlapping needs, elementals, limbic and unknown voices (ghosts), animals, pre-colonial and colonial imprints of violence and peace, and watershed. When I fell, I got up again. When I got up again, I fell. I found and lost time. Lost and found center. Gave myself away and was returned to me. To fall is inevitable. To choose to fall once is an act of trust and surrender—of self and earth. To choose to fall many times—to elect to continue risking oneself to come closer to another—is an act of intimacy. It is said that the path of a Hebrew mystic is not related to external achievements or philosophical glory but to a willingness to fall down times and choose to continue rising. Paiute high desert elementals shared exceptional relational wisdom. This work is an intervention that cannot be undertaken alone.

HOW TO FALL: a guide for climate crisis, a meditation on the invention of the ancient-future, and lessons from the legacy of Hebrew nomadism as an act of surrender/

zine and course / coming in 2025.

Thank you to PLAYA Residency