Ritual

(an excerpt from Connect, Volume 2 - Spring)



The first time the word ritual perked my ears was around a campfire at an artist residency in rural Nebraska. One of the other residents was defending the practice of rolling her own cigarettes. I had rolled my own for years, and although I enjoyed the process, I had never once thought of it as a ritual. I loved this idea. All of the sudden anything in the world could be a prayer. Anything could be meditation.




It is morning and I am in the kitchen. The countertops are cold, and my body still warm from sleep. The light is grey-blue and seeps in, rather than streaming or pouring or flooding. The beep of our digital scale as I turn it on seems to pierce the air. Even though he never does, every morning I am sure my child will wake to this noise. I inhale the smell of freshly ground small batch coffee beans. Most mornings my mind wanders back to the coffee shop at the mall with my mom when I was young. I remember standing solidly in the entryway to the store, letting the smell of flavored vanilla coffee and sugar cookies wash over me. As I pour water from our kettle into the funnel of a gifted Chemex carafe I do math. X grams coffee x 20 = Y. Y - X = Z grams water…

I pour water in increments, starting the math over many times, as my foggy brain loses focus each time the grounds are about to settle. If I was a different kind of person I would make the same amount of coffee X each day, but my irrational fear of life becoming mundane keeps me taking the long way, the more difficult route.

Once I add the final number of grams of water Z, I choose a mug, taking the still dripping carafe with me, into my desk in the sunroom, on the other end of our apartment, in which the sunlight is streaming pouring flooding in through lace curtains and plants; as opposed to seeping. And thus begins my day.


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Meditations on the Mundane

Begin to write a list of all the rituals you have in your life. Choose one and free write about it for a bit. Maybe try this with one or two more as you explore how these processes fit into your life. Consider how they came to be, how they have evolved, and what parts of your personality they highlight.

Choose one ritual and make it the subject of introspection for the season. Make it your muse. Make it a meditation. Do it slowly and notice every part of it. As time spent with it progresses, notice how it shifts, changes, stays the same. Notice how your thoughts about it change. Also, draw it. Make a still life out of it. Write love letters to it. Make it into art. Go out and get it in a different way than usual. Try and do it in all the ways.

In college I had an assignment called 66 Apples. The challenge was to draw an apple 66 different times, 66 different ways. It provided a framework in which one blows through all the obvious answers, only to realize the assignment is not even halfway complete; a rude push out of the good ole comfort zone. With 93 days in the season of spring, 66 drawings, poems or love letters of or to your favorite habit can be easily done. Maybe shoot for 90 and see what happens :)