"You Are What You Consume"

“You are what you consume,” my mom cautioned me. Of course, she meant to dissuade me from listening to anything that might harm me. I don’t even remember what I was listening to that prompted it. It could have been slipknot, limp bizkit, or even eminem. All artists sort of provided some outlet for 14 year old me, who hated his father for his betrayals and broken promises. I don’t fault her for offering counsel as a form of protection against some of the most difficult emotions that a young person can try and understand: anger and hatred. As a father, I know the inclination. You just want to try and get your child to a point of development where they can not get taken for a ride by art and culture that is essentially irresponsible and hot garbage.

I remember listening to slipknot’s self-titled album for the first time at 14. When you first hear truly angry, aggressive music, it can be a true moment of catharsis, an outlet for a whole host of emotions that society does not teach young men how to handle. This was the sort of music that my mom was warning me not to consume. She’s not wrong to make a cautionary note to a young person, whose brain would not fully develop for another 11 years. Yet, this album along with Rage Against the Machine’s “Evil Empire,” and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album are where I learned how to channel and use my own sacred rage. I was just luckily that even from a young age I was a fire walker; I was always able to channel my own anger and hatred in constructive directions.

The fact that I walked with the fire made me a dangerous competitor on the tennis court as a teen. Looking back, I must have looked absolutely crazed on the court. I would be yelling and screaming at myself the whole time, thrusting my fist in triumph over each key point won, and walking methodically back and forth on the court like a caged tiger. I didn’t realize this was my own unique talent to turn those strong emotions in my favor. I watched others wilt when under the influence of their anger and rage. I just got more focused, more determined. As I have talked about before, tennis was my ticket out of Toledo. Tennis wasn’t just a game for me. It felt like life and death, completely encompassing. This is the hunger games of the rust belt.

Maria Molteni’s (@Strega_Maria) recent interview with Missing Witches helped me normalize finding the divinatory origin stories within my own sports narratives, such as in this instance above. Specifically, Molteni’s ability to queer and enchant basketball and her own personal narrative story telling around what basketball meant to her were deeply inspiring for me to hear. For too long, I have felt it passé to discuss how the roots of my own magic were found in my own disciplined approach to tennis; a discipline that has largely shaped the person I am today. The roots of my ability to sit with my own sacred rage and not have it consume me were honed on the tennis court. I am ready to cast aside that silly narrative for myself so I can integrate that part of my experience into this story telling project. So what if one of my sword in the stone moments was on a tennis court? It doesn’t make me any less of a druid. 

As is evident from this example above, I started with a flurry of activity rejecting this bit of my mom’s own folk wisdom she passed down to me. As any typical teenager or kid in their early 20s, I lived to break the rules that I followed when I was younger. I wanted to immerse myself in the world and see what I could see. I wanted to experience the sounds, ideas, and places that were nothing but mysteries to me. There is liberation in transgressing these boundaries, in testing the boundaries of what is safe to consume. As young people, we must do this to emancipate and become our own person in the world. It’s how we find our own place, ethics, and tastes. You gotta touch the fire to learn to respect it. 

Eventually, I came to see the wisdom of what my mom was sharing. It’s only takes so many times getting burned before you start to see the wisdom in basic premises like, “You are what you consume.” That’s not to say that I am not noticing things all the that aren’t serving me that I have as a part of my daily life. When the wisdom is doing that sort of everyday heavy lifting for you, that’s when you know you got a good nugget of gold you gotta hold on to. For instance, I don’t want to passive consume first person shooter video games all day and live in worlds that corporations built. I am constantly watching my relationship to gaming to be sure I am making enough room for my spirituality, weaving, and writing in my free time. That’s not to say that gaming doesn’t have a place as a form of rest from the inevitable difficulties of being a parent and human in the collapse of late stage capitalism. I just don’t want it to define me totally. 

True to this maxim, I did a little spring cleaning of my subscriptions to think critically about what I was consuming. I wanted my subscriptions to be in alignment with where I wanted to go the rest of the year. I decided that in this season of emergence I wanted to cut ties with more streaming services (HBO and Shudder got the axe this time.) I replaced them by joining the Missing Witches Coven and up’ing my pledge for the Mourning Light Divination Coven. I wanted to enrich my life with my friends and new communities and cut ties with more passive forms of entertainment. Having done this, I already felt the typical empowerment that always comes from value-aligned action. It only feels that much sweeter because it’s a part of what I learned from my mother, who left us over 8 years ago.

Embodying the wisdom she taught me is one way she is still living through me. I have been thinking back lately to a poem (included below) I wrote what feels like eons ago that accompanied this weaving above where I describe what it felt like to learn how to weave and complete her unfinished business on this plane of existence. It felt like my hands were her hands. It felt like we were and still are sharing a woven language. The thread has never been cut. That’s the lie of most of what purports to be the wisdom we are taught about death. My experience, which was born out in my own Irish Wisdom tradition that I am learning within, is that the veil is thin between the this plane and the Otherworld. Threads still tie us to our kin across those divides.

“Mom,

You continue.

You continue.

You continue.

In my hands.

Fulfilling your unrealized dream

with a hereditary dexterity.

In my heart.

Prying myself open to the world.

Living a life

of vulnerability

of kindness.

Walking along your compassionate path.

In the fiber.

Speaking with your symbols:

Tower, swirl, tower, swirl,

Perfectly gauged stitch.

Telling stories of flying and stillness.

Where once I was absent,

I now sit with you at the loom.

Weaving your spirit 

into every space

where row meets row.

Learning to forgive and begin again.”

This is the gift of your own family’s wisdom in these times of imperialism, whiteness, late stage capitalism, and collapse. Our society would like to tell you that you are an individual, tied to no one, that must practice conspicuous consumption in order to differentiate yourself from others and demonstrate through your labor that you are worthy of affection and the basic means to survive. This is all a lie. Your own kin remind you of that daily. I know my mom told me countless times, “I love you no matter who you are or what you do.” Wrap yourself in that wisdom as a cloak to ward off the virus of a culture we are enmeshed within today. 

Beyond that, there is worth in intentionally gathering your bits of wisdom and being the storehouse for them. We, as humans, have always found use in collecting and storing seeds, even if Monsanto is trying to impose trademarks on the seed domain. I think of people being wisdom banks as no different. Gather up those hardy bits of wisdom and pass them in stories of how you used them to your kin. Create your own little heirloom wisdom from which a new culture with values that challenge the dominant paradigm can spring. I often think of my mom as the starting point for the culture that I am continuing to build for the future generations that I am already interwoven with through space and time. 

Yet, you can also add to your storehouse of wisdom by adding in little tidbits that you pick up along the way. Aside from Molteni’s normalization of sports for the enchanted in her Missing Witches interview, I want to carry forward her EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT thoughts on the inherent qualities of art she shared during her conversation with Amy and Risa:

"What I love about art is that it is not utilitarian. It's something else...I do think that art was applied in some way, and usually in some spiritual way. Objects were being created to be used in some kind of transcendent spiritual way....I think the reason that I gravitate toward making something that is handheld or totally consuming has to do with its activation and application. I think those are the OG, inherent qualities of art." Full Interview

This is precisely why I weave: for spiritual reasons. I don’t weave to fill gaps on my wall or floor. I don’t weave to clothe myself. I weave to open pathways to other dimensions. I weave to honor my mom, goddesses, and sacred death. I weave because it makes me closer with my spider guides. I weave to bind myself to other folx and develop barter lines. I don’t think I have ever heard a more clear articulation of these basic functions of art. I want to carry this forward. BRAVO Maria!

Until next time, dear reader,

James

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